


Against the World

by Avilthenaze



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Awkward Sexual Situations, Bullied Hux, Bullied Kylo Ren, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emo Kylo Ren, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Revenge Plots, everyone basically spit on Hux and Kylo and they spit back, kylux high school au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-24 04:26:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9701480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avilthenaze/pseuds/Avilthenaze
Summary: "His association – for lack of a better word – with Hux had started when the ginger nerd found him crying in the bathroom one day, during class hours, and had just watched him making a mess of himself without saying anything."- Or how the two most despised boys in school develop a deep friendship over their hatred of humanity and planning petty revenge against their bullies.





	1. Hux against the world

His association – for lack of a better word – with Hux had started when the ginger nerd found him crying in the bathroom one day, during class hours, and had just watched him making a mess of himself without saying anything. Maybe he was getting off on seeing someone else humiliated or something. Kylo, slumping on a toilet seat, hadn’t trusted himself to insult him away, he wasn’t sure he would be able to form understandable words in his state. Hux didn’t try to help or ask what was wrong he just stared at him. After a few minutes, when Kylo had mustered enough will to try and whipe his eyes and his runny nose against his sleeve, not even bothering to use toilet paper and leaving dirty lines on the cloth, Hux finally spoke:

“I’d rather eat your snot then kiss Gibbs.”

So he had heard. A bunch of girls at lunch hours were probably insulted that Kylo had taken the right to sit at the other end of their table and they had decided to play a game between themselves.

“So, would you rather kiss Gibbs or…Kylo Ren?” the blond one with pretty pink nails had asked. She had said _Kylo Ren_ like the very obviously despising quote that it was in her mouth.

“Ew Emma, how do you always manage to make these things so gross?”

“That’s the game’s requirement Tina. Like, that’s why we play it.”

In the end Tina had been fairly quick to pick Gibbs, the massive PE teacher who managed the feat of wearing a ponytail while being more than half bald and was sporting a healthy beer gut, because really, he might be ugly, but you’d have to be another kind of freak altogether to consider even wanting to smell Kylo Ren.

“Have you seen the size of this thing in the middle of his face? And the saucers that are his ears? He must have elephantiasis or something. Besides, I’m sure is room is like, full of dirty socks full of jeez”, had concluded Tina, approved by a general laughter of pure disgust.

Kylo had finished his meal quietly and then had managed to make it to the bathroom before letting it go. He hadn’t managed to stop when Hux showed himself though.

“Yeah but that’s because you’re a well-known sick fuck,” Kylo managed to answer after swallowing a sob, sniffling. The salt in his tears had made his skin dry. Drops were falling from the tap, indifferent. A tile was chipped and the next one was half broken. You could see some glue residue on the wall.

Hux smirked at him, like the whole business was a good joke, before finally unzipping his pants and taking a leak.

Kylo didn’t really know why the whole episode mattered, because he considered Hux to be underneath even him in the school’s hierarchy, but it did. They didn’t become friends, exactly, but they began to acknowledge each other in the hallways.

Hux was widely known as a horrible suck up to teachers, correcting the other students when their answers weren’t satisfactory, the last one to be picked in any sport’s game, —not because he was weak but because he was such an horrible cheat that whoever was suicidal enough to pick him always ended up loosing because of the advantages conferred to the opposing team–, always sneering at you with his nose up even when you gave him wedgies or threw food in his face. Once he got permission from a teacher to set up a chess club, and absolutely no one turned up. Even the ones at the very bottom of the food chain avoided him. No one even bothered to call him something else than by his family name. Compared to him, Kylo had the vague advantage of being a weird sorry emo and not just plain detestable.

But Kylo guessed he had nothing to loose in terms of reputation anyways, and after a while, they began to take their lunch together, more often then not in the parking lot. There was a sad piece of grass near the entrance, with a bent garbage disposal, and people mostly left them alone when they sat there. This was a great selling point, even if Kylo’s fingers started to get numb in the early November wind.

Hux had weird eating habits. His bag was always full of metal tins containing fish in water or in a kind of wine sauce. It stank. He always ate it very neatly though, with proper cutlery.

“Why do you always eat this shit?” Kylo asked him after the fourth of fifth time they’d eaten together.

“Proteins," Hux answered laconically. "I’m small, if someone ever corners me I want to be able to take it. Plus I’ll have you know that fish is very healthy.”

Somehow, the answer didn’t surprise Kylo. The redhead continued eating daintily with his fork, seemingly unbothered by the admission.

“Yeah? Why don’t you train instead?”

“I do that too. Judo lessons.”

A car left the parking lot, its exhaust system leaving a warm and foul trail in the air.

“I’ve never seen you react when they amuse themselves with you though,” Kylo remarked, before taking a bite of his sandwich with a wondering face.

“Well,” Hux explained haughtily, “I’d rather take revenge afterwards than scaring them away once and for all. They have to reveal themselves and then pay.”

“I’ve never heard of you taking revenge either,” Kylo countered.

“That’s because no one talks to you.”

“Asshole.” Kylo threw a piece of bread at him. Hux didn’t even bother to duck, didn’t even close his eyes.

“No, the truth is, that’s because I’m good. If I left evidence, I’d get punished. It’d defeat the purpose.” Hux answered, tossing neatly the empty tuna can in the garbage bin.

Kylo was kind of impressed. When people made fun of him, it hurt, and he wallowed in it to make it worth it. But it seemed to please Hux to be treated like shit, because then he had an excuse to hurt people back.

In light of this conversation, he wasn’t surprised to ear a ruckus one day after the morning classes while walking to his locker.

“Who the fuck would do that!” he heard a girl cry. Tina.

The hallway stank. More precisely, it smelled like shit. That was, Kylo discovered, because someone had injected some in Tina’s locker through the little breathing holes. It had apparently ruined both her lunch and her favourite sweater. People were beginning to flee the scene after having satisfied their curiosity, because the smell was really bad. Kylo left only after hearing with added pleasure that the janitor wouldn’t clean it up because her stuff wasn’t strictly school property, so Tina would have to do it herself. School staff wasn’t going to suffer the consequences of stupid school pranks.

For the first time in quite a long time, Kylo felt something like elation expand in his chest.

“I see what you meant”, he said when he sat down next to a sneering Hux in the parking lot.

“Yeah well, mackerel always gives me quite the bowel movement.”

* * *

As it turned out, Kylo quite enjoyed vengeance too. It didn’t deliver the instant gratification of physical violence, but you could inflect a longer lasting torment on whoever had wronged you. And Hux’s list, which he offered him to add to as he saw fit, was quite extensive. His list of retribution methods was quite well rounded too. Fake love letters were a good way to sow discord among groups of friends. Kylo was particularly impressed by Hux’s protocol of picking up drafts in the classroom dustbins and archive them for future use if he ever needed to copy someone’s writing. Anonymous notes to the principal pretending to be very anxious about a classmate abuse of illicit substances also proved quite disruptive and annoying, all the more so when they turned out to be justified.

“Can’t let the principal chase after ghosts after all,” Hux had say when Peter Guttman had been found to be carrying.

Peter Guttman had been very fond of giving Hux wedgies. Nobody had tried that on Kylo, because he didn’t look like he would take it without a fight. But Hux’s knitted jumpers sent quite another message. Now dear Peter would have other things to worry about.

Hux also liked to spit in the random shakes and bottles of water that people had the misfortune of leaving behind in the locker room. “They all have something to pay for anyway,” was Hux justification. Kylo was happy to provide him with healthy and non-judgemental loogies.

But what he enjoyed the most was messing up cars and bikes. There was a simple joy to destruction that he didn’t find in Hux’s careful planning and sly tricks. So when Hux unleashed him on a particular vehicle, he let repressed rage guide him, like a red humming haze.

* * *

It was pouring outside that day. They had to stay inside for lunch, and, of course, Tucker, emptied the remnants of his soda can into Hux’s neck while leaving the cafeteria.

“Nerds”, was all he said, a seemingly carefree gesture that provoked the glee of his clique.

Tucker and Hux were well acquainted as the former regularly used the later as a human stress relief device. Tucker felt very justified in that crusade because Hux had once mocked his girlfriend in history class for asking where the iron curtain was stacked after the cold war. It usually went quite well, Tucker having never been able to figure why he so often got flat tires lately.

But this time Kylo was there, and taking his revenge cold wasn’t a second nature for him yet. And so he got up, violently grabbed Tucker by his hoodie to make him take a step back, and punched him square in the face. Tucker let out a shocked noise, and right after that, a good amount of blood began to flood from his nose.

“Oh my god!” was the only thing his girlfriend managed in the relative silence this series of events had created in the room. She hurried to his side to put worried hands on him as if he was a poor lamb.

When the first few seconds of stupor passed, Tucker’s friend grabbed Kylo by his hair and managed to slam his face into the cafeteria table. He lifted it and was about to slam it again when Hux viciously planted his fork in his forearm. The avenger let out a wounded yelp, but Hux still got viciously backhanded for his trouble. The whole incident became a lot dirtier very fast.

Kylo and Hux only managed to avoid being suspended for three days because they were widely known, even among teachers, as bullied loners. Kylo admitted that it was a good thing that Hux usually went the quiet way to get revenge. They only got detention for the rest of the month, which would give them enough time to write a 5,000 words essay each about the ill conceived method of answering violence with violence.

“You imbecile,” Hux hissed at him, while they were walking back to the bus stop that afternoon, apparently under control expect for his blotched cheeks. The nap of his neck was still sticky with his sugar and he smelled like Mountain Dew.

“Now he’s going to be on to us. We could have wrecked him so good. Do you understand what you’ve done? This is a total waste. The principal didn’t even punish him more than us.”

He let a few moment of silence express his anger better than his words could.

“Worse than that, the school will phone my father. Then, on top of being humiliated and dirty, I’ll take a second beating. Not for getting into a fight mind you, but for getting picked on like a weakling.”

Kylo could see how only having to deal with the Mountain Dew and differed retribution would have been better. The air was turning cold and it felt nice against his throbbing temple and the scratch in his eyebrow.

“I’m sorry," he said. “It’s just that…I’ve never had someone to care about before. It messed with my judgment. I won’t happen again, unless you say the word, Hux.”

Hux raised an eyebrow, not believing him or surprised that he could be reasonable after all. The bus arrived and they both got on it, sitting in the first row.

“Fine then. But you’d better behave. Or you’ll make me regret associating with you.” Hux finally said, his bag clutched in his lap. He seemed nervous, even if is tone was calm.

“Your dad beats you?” Kylo asked when the conversation didn’t seem to pick up.

He hadn’t needed to deliberate much about asking the question. Hux had already seen him at his most abject, and they had no illusion about salvaging any kind of pride between them.

“Yeah. He’s a military freak. I’m a huge disappointment to him because I have good grades but zero charisma. He knows I’ll be obscure. I’m not worth of his name. The only satisfaction I give him really is when I fuck up in a fashion obvious enough that he can make me pay for it.”

Kylo considered that a moment. Hux didn’t even seem particularly angry. The bus hit a bump in the road, which jolted everyone.

“You’ll be fine,” He told Hux. “You can take it. You’re a mean bastard. I liked your move with the fork, it was a neat trick.”

“Thanks” Hux answered easily enough, a smile coming back on his face. “He doesn’t even hit hard anyway, that’d be acknowledging me as a man.”

Kylo liked that the smile was a bit twisted. They shared a pretty disgusting protein bar he had brought in his bag, and Hux waved dumbly at him when he got out of the bus. It was expected of him to act like a nerd anyway.

That evening he received a text from Hux.

_Even if you don’t have a brain it was nice to have a big brute on my side for once._

_Sorry again!!! I hope it wasn’t too bad with your dad :s Good night_. Kylo replied, torn between satisfaction and regret.

* * *

His mother discovered that he had finally managed to make a friend the day when he refused to stay at home even if he had a cold. Kylo never ever skipped a reason to miss school. Even the day when he had hurt his little finger while assembling some Ikea shelves he had rolled himself on the ground until his mum allowed him to stay in. She couldn’t believe that he was willing to go even if she had heard him cough a good part of the night, and at first she worried that he had gotten into drugs and couldn’t stay away from his supplier for too long. She had become so annoying with her nagging about his health and hers _Ben, is there something we should talk about, I won’t be mad, just tell me_ that he had just let out the name.

“It’s not that for fuck sake, it’s Hux.”

“Hux?” she repeated, not understanding. “What’s that?”

“Aaarrr, I can’t believe it,” Kylo moaned. “Hux is a person. He’s my friend okay? I can’t leave him alone to face them,” he spat.

Leia was speechless for a moment.

“Honey, that’s wonderful! Why didn’t you tell me you had a new friend? You should invite him over!”

“You wouldn’t like him anyway, seeing has he chose to befriend me,” was all Kylo said, shoving coughing pills in his pocket and leaving the house with his hair tucked haphazardly in his scarf.

* * *

“You don’t look well,” was how Hux greeted him when he took his place next to him in the bus. “You haven’t put your eyeliner on.”

“Well I’ve got a nasty cold, so point me in the direction of whoever you want to get contaminated, I’ll spit my lungs in their faces,” Kylo answered in a raspy voice.

Hux seemed pleased by the prospect rather than scared to catch something himself. He was as enduring as a parasite after all.

“Also,” Kylo continued, “my mother thinks you’re a goddamned miracle.”

Hux snickered meaningfully.

“You are really a sorry bastard if I’m your happy ending.”

Kylo smiled at him, his nose buried in a Kleenex that was already going to shreds.

“Do it to Emma,” Hux decided after a moment of reflection. “It’s high time this bitch started paying in increments.”

Kylo was very glad that he had managed to get out of bed. He did fake sneeze on Emma, a good mouthful of spittle and snot. She screamed like someone has thrown acid on her face. The sound was like music to his ears.

* * *

All anybody was talking about in class a few days later was how Brendan almost died –and by that you had to understand _got nasty burns on his hands_ – during chemistry class.  
When Kylo mentioned this to Hux during lunch at their usual spot in the parking lot, Hux said nonchalantly:

“Well he did make me trip on purpose. In the stairs.”

“Hux, what did you do?” Kylo asked, his tone hued with admiration.

“Nothing you can prove.” Hux smirked. He looked like a satisfied cat.

“Here, for you.” Kylo said, opening a Tupperware, which contained a greenish looking lumpy cake. He had invested in black mittens but his fingertips were very red.

“Err…thanks”, Hux answered, peering into the box but not quite daring to grab a piece of the thing Kylo was offering.

“Yeah, it looks weird and it’s not even very good but I made it with protein powder and avocado instead of butter. Hence the vomit colour. There’s also soymilk. And oats. A real freak cake.”

“Oh,” was all Hux said. He picked a square and set himself to eat it in regular efficient bites. “You know, you should dye your hair soon. In the sun light I think I can see your roots.”

“Oh really?” asked Kylo worriedly, patting is hear with a hand hurriedly wiped on his jeans. As if he could touch the colour. “I hadn’t noticed. Is it very obvious?”

“No, it doesn’t really show in artificial light. Your natural colour is quite dark anyway.”

“Shit, I don’t think I have a bottle of dye left.” Kylo tried to look at his roots with his phone’s camera. His dad was usually quick to make fun of him for dying his hair. Why hadn’t he said anything this time when it could finally have been useful? “I’ll have to wait until this weekend. I hope nobody else notices…”

Hux put the last bite of cake in his mouth, chewed and swallowed before saying:

“There’s a mart near where I live. I’m sure they’ll have black dye, it is after all the most generic colour.”

“Yeah?” Kylo asked hopefully. Then his expression darkened. “But…how would I get back after?”

Hux shrugged like the whole business was no big deal. Like he wasn’t suggesting that they hang out outside of school.

“I’ll lend you my bike. You can return it tomorrow morning and we’ll walk together to my bus stop.”

Kylo really wasn’t going to argue.

“Okay. That could work. Okay, let’s do that.”

He felt a sort of thrill at the idea that he was going to see Hux’s house. The last time he had been asked to come over at someone else’s house was for a birthday party in the first year of middle school. He had dressed up as a ninja turtle and everyone else had made terrible fun of him because they were all wearing Gap or something, and not any costumes. But Ben had hated his mum the most for not telling him anything. She could have saved him from crippling embarrassment. He debated for a moment sharing the story with Hux, but then he did.

“You’re lucky,” Hux said. “I wasn’t invited anywhere after primary school. At the last birthday party I went to I thought it was aesthetically pleasing that everybody was drinking big glass of white milk with their brownies. I did the same because I wanted to belong. I was young and naïve. But of course, I’m lactose intolerant.”

“Of course,” snickered Kylo. “Must have been a nice mess like only you can manage them.”

* * *

Kylo wondered how it was that all the marts seemed to smell the same. Like spice, detergent and overly sweet fruit.

“Maybe there’s a Mart fragrance, Hux suggested. Like they do for Abercrombie and Hollister. Keeps the customers coming back.”

Kylo snorted. There wasn’t much of a choice as far as the hair dye was concerned, but as Hux had predicted, there were at least two blacks to choose from. Kylo elected to buy the one with the glossy Indian lady on it. After that, they walked to Hux’s house. The neighbourhood seemed a bit more well off then his own, but equally non-descript, too new to really seem lived in. Kylo’s plastic bag was dangling from his hand and the sun was beginning to set. Hux let out a sigh and said:

“When it’s calm like this, I feel like I can almost forget that I’m the perennial scapegoat of a closed reputational system.”

Kylo let out an amused noise, but he didn’t laugh outright.

“I don’t get it,” he told Hux after a pause. “Like, why intelligence isn’t more valued. You could be useful to people, if nothing else. For homework and stuff.”

“God that would be awful,” Hux replied easily. “I’m supposed to use my intelligence against them, not for them. Anyway, let’s not talk about that. Tell me something about yourself. If it’s good, I’ll give you a snack at home.”

“Okay, well…err,” Kylo looked around him for inspiration. There wasn’t anyone in the street. His knee hit the plastic bag. “I started dying my hair when I was fourteen. My mum got mad as hell and my dad asked if I planned on joining Kiss.”

Hux snorted at the out-dated reference. “Why did you want to have black hair by the way?”

“I…I had read a nice description in snow white…I know it’s ridiculous, but I thought it would make my face more, like, coherent or something…” Kylo trailed off.

Hux smiled, and Kylo understood why he made people uneasy. You couldn’t know if he was mean or if he could see right through you and knew something about yourself that you didn’t. It was a bit unnerving. It was a Hux smile. But in the end the ginger boy simply said:

“It was the right choice.”

He offered Kylo some sort of Greek yogurt, in which he himself put a sour cherry preserve and some crunchy granola. It was nice. They ate it at the counter of an impersonal modern kitchen. Kylo wanted to see Hux’s bedroom but he didn’t dare to ask. There were no pictures in the kitchen, nor in any other room that he had went through.

Hux’s bike was red and claimed to be a rock glider, a surprising choice for the suburbs. Kylo was able to sit on it without needing to make any adjustments. Sometimes he forgot that Hux was nearly as tall as him. Hux stayed at the door until he turned the corner of the street, a dark silhouette against the light of the house behind him.

* * *

On November 22, the school had organised a _social media workshop_ to teach kids how they could be useful professional tools - on top of enabling stalking and exhibition, as Hux had put it. An easy-going guy from an obscure organisation about work skills training came to give them a Power Point presentation about the wonderful opportunities that blogging and twitting could bring you. Everybody in senior year had to attend. Kylo found Hux’s bright red hair in one of the last rows of the auditorium, and practically ran before someone else could take the seat next to him. The seats in the back were very coveted and it was one of the rare situations where Hux being Hux wouldn’t guarantee him a space.

The presentation was roughly as uninteresting as the description of the event had set it up to be. Kylo and Hux occupied themselves with a silent game of noughts and crosses.

“Say,” a guy named Daryl abruptly asked, leaning into Kylo’s space to seize an easy opportunity to be funny, ”if I wanted to get a glimpse at your sad life, would I find some demos of your emo music on MySpace?” At least his taunt was more or less related with the presentation.

“I don’t sing,” said Kylo to toss him a bone. Not reacting usually excited further the bullies, because their ego didn’t allow them to quit the conversation on a defeat.

“Oh I see, German metal lip-synch videos then?” Daryl pursued in an ecstatic voice, covered in the glory of his friends' mean laughter.

This time Kylo stayed silent. Daryl had had his laugh, he could go back to whatever inane conversation he was having with his group before genius stroke him. But apparently Daryl had decided he was on a strike.

“Oh, no, did I got it all wrong? You’re not a music guy, you run a _my little pony_ forum!”

“Oh my god, that is so likely!” approved Shannon, a girl Kylo did land his eraser to on the first day of school. Of course the speaker went on oblivious to the small ruckus that went on at the back of the room. He must have been quite used to engaging a dispassionate audience.

Kylo remembered the promise he had made not to let his anger take over. There were worst things to be accused off, he told himself. He inhaled as deeply as the stale air of the auditorium permitted it, and tried to unfocus his gaze. But what really worked was looking down at his lap, trying to mute down the laughs. Because then he saw that Hux’s hands were clenched into tight fists.

* * *

There was some heavy snowing in early December and the bus service was momentarily discontinued for security reasons. A lot of people didn’t bother to show up, but of course Kylo couldn’t miss school now. His mum offered to pick him up with the car after work.

“Could we drop Hux on the way?” Kylo had asked, his heart beating a little fast with the admission that _yes_ , he had a friend now. “He lives not very far away from the school.”

Never in his life had he obtained a favour so easily. So now he and Hux were waiting for Leia to finish work and arrive, snug into a corner of the _low voices only_ of the school’s library. Luckily there was no one around expect for the librarian, who seemed engrossed in her phone. Kylo found an old teenage magazine forgotten on one of the tables and, after flipping through the beauty pages, decided to subject Hux to an ominous _Have you found your soul mate_ test.

“Okay, let me read it to you,” he began, after deposing a pile of black mittens, scarf and hat on the table next to the magazine.

“Must you really?” Hux asked in a suffering tone, half hidden in the hood of his coat. The cold had kept his cheeks and the tip of his nose very red all day, and the rest of his skin very white.

“Yeah, it will distract you.”

“Oh, so that’s all it’s about” Hux said in a mocking voice. “Really Kylo, how often do you need to be reassured that I actually like you?”

“As often as possible. You have to compensate for an awful lot you know,” Kylo answered with a smile.

Hux could tease him all he wanted, the truth was that Kylo knew he was actually very nervous to meet his mum, and he hoped this kind of silly occupation would allow him not to be too anxious.

“Okay so, first question. What goes through your mind when you see him/her?”

“Thank god.”

Kylo let out a pleased laugh at that, that he remembered belatedly to stifle not to attract the librarian’s attention. He licked his lips and fished into his bag before discretely bringing a piece of candy to his mouth. Hux shook his head when he offered him some with a kind of eye choreography.

“I’ll tick _my heart flutters_ then.” He decided. “Next question: Would you introduce him/her to your parents?”

Hux snorted. “God no. I don’t want you to flee.”

“Okay, so that’s one square. Guess I’ll skip the _what do your friends think of him/her_.”

“Depends,” Hux objected. “What do _you_ think? Do you think you’re good for me?”

“I don’t know if I’m good for you, Kylo frowned, pushing the candy against his teeth with his tongue. "But I know _you_ are good for _me_.”

“Tick the corniest answer then,” Hux decided.

He was shuffling through newspapers without really reading them. It had left black stains on the tips of his fingers.

“Okay, next question.” Kylo carried on. “How do you feel when you are apart from him?”

Hux didn’t comment on the dropping of the _her_ option. “Like I’m alone in the world,” he answered as if it was perfectly obvious, not ever bothering to look up from _USA Today_.

“The test wasn’t made for intense shit like that Hux,” Kylo said, but he was ticking an answer none the less. That got him a reaction.

“It’s a test about fucking soul mates!”

“Yeah, but you know how people always do stuff half-heartedly in our rotten society. Next question. Do you share the same interests? Oh my god, one of the possible answers is _he threw my hat in the mud_. What the fuck is that? That test was literally created for us.”

“Well..I guess we do both get bullied a lot. Does that count as a hobby?”

“Err…I’ll just tick yes then. Next. How does he treat you?”

Hux thought for a moment. “Like a friend. But put the cheesiest thing they have because that’s how it feels to me to have a friend.”

“Okay.” Kylo declared, gleefully circling something. “I knew this test was a good idea. Last question then. What does your heart say? I don’t believe this shit, one of the answers is literaly _friendzone_ with a crying emoji.”

Hux didn’t seem overly impressed.

“Kylo, we basically did the test with the understanding that its entertainment value resided in its extreme lameness.”

“I know but they’ve really outdone themselves. I have to count your points, so try to answer the last question.”

“Okay. What does my heart say?” Hux pretended to have to think very hard about the question. “I guess…I’m grateful that I’ve found you.”

Kylo was lost in thoughts for a moment, the pen digging in his chin. Hux returned to nonchalantly flipping through his newspaper. Kylo finally decided on an answer. He then went at the end of the magazine to calculate the result of the test. He smirked.

“Hux, I’m very emotional…apparently we are _totally twin flames_ ”.

* * *

“Hello Mrs Organa,” Hux said with a voice Kylo had never heard before. “Thank you for driving me home.”

Kylo sat in the back with him, the old family car looking very alien now that Hux was sitting in it.

“No problem at all,” Leia told Hux, smiling at him in the rear-view mirror. “Kylo talks about you all the time.”

“Mum!” Kylo cried in protestation. He had taken pains lengthily briefing her during the morning ride especially to avoid this.

“He does?” Hux asked, an eyebrow raised. But Kylo knew him well enough by now to know that he was very pleased with himself.


	2. Kylo Contra Mundum

“I thought about it a lot,” Hux told him the following week, while they were trying to get some work done in an empty classroom, “but I still can’t figure out how to give Daryl the lesson he deserves.”

It sounded almost like an apology. Kylo stopped chewing on his pen.

“Don’t you have figured out which one is his car yet?” “I have,” Hux said, “but the janitor is starting to get suspicious. The damage rate has augmented quite drastically lately. An internal investigation is being conducted.” He gave Kylo a smirk at that. “Truth is, what I’d really like for once would be for you to give him the good beating he deserves.”

“Oh?” Kylo perked up. “You know you only have to say the time and place.”

Hux gave a longing sigh. Papers where stacked haphazardly around him, annotated in blue ink. There were also some sentences struck out in angry red in some places. But for all his dreams of violence, he explained with a serious face: “No, we can’t. It’s not worth risking having adults involved, and the chance of that happening would be quite high. Or he could retaliate with some of his buddies, and we’re only two.” His voice went lower and he added: “It was wistful thinking on my part. It’s just that sometimes I feel like it would be nice to have enemies, you know, instead of just bullies.”

“We’ll bid our time,” Kylo said, giving him a compassionate pat on the forearm. “It’s something you’ve taught me well. Vengeance is worth the wait.”

* * *

“You think I’m impressed fucker?” was the first thing Kylo heard when Hux’s classroom door opened.

The guy who had bellowed that was flushed and he must had flung his backpack on his shoulder in a hurry because the sling had pulled his t-shirt in a sort of noose around his neck. Hux was right being him, looking very composed for his part, his red hair neatly parted and his shirt still crisp.

“I don’t really care what you think Caleb to be honest,” he replied neutrally.

Students were pouring out of the classroom in their wake, and with them, noise and stale air. The dishevelled student took cover in the chaos to get into Hux’s space and hissed at him:

“Don’t even try to be a smart ass you little rat. You’ll pay for this.”

That Caleb guy was not insulting Hux for the pleasure of it. He wasn’t even only annoyed. His face was set in a hard expression and he seemed really angry. Kylo found his hand instantly pushing back against Caleb’s torso, to move between him and Hux. The no outward violence rule had to go both ways.

“Leave him alone,” he said between his teeth, trying to keep things discreet.

“Who the fuck are you?” Caleb asked with wild eyes, taking Kylo in.

Kylo maintained his hand firmly into position, even when the guy tried to move past him. The teacher’s voice was coming closer to the door, the last of the students trickling out. That must have been what decided Caleb to deal with grievances against Hux later. He took a step back from Kylo, his eyes still throwing dagger at Hux, and left, shoving people out of his way. His backpack fell of his shoulder and he gave a vicious kick to one of the lockers before disappearing at a corner.

Kylo let out a breath, passed a hand in his hair, and turned to cast a questioning look at Hux.

“Let’s go, I’ll explain later,” his friend simply said. The air outside was bitingly cold compared to the populated warmth of the school building, but Kylo liked it as it seemed to ease his headache almost immediately. Hux didn’t seem particularly tense, but he kept quiet and Kylo knew that he was thinking behind his impassive front.

“So, what was all that about?” he asked Hux as they were approaching the bus stop.

“Nothing much really,” Hux said. Maybe the confrontation really hadn’t gotten to him the way it had to Kylo. “I reported to Mrs Haynes that I saw him using his phone during the test last week. It was supposed to be a no dictionary translation. So today, before handing them back, she asked him a few random questions. Like, if he could tell the class what the words ‘abîmer’ or ‘poutre’ meant. Of course he had no idea, even if he had translated them properly in the test.”

The bus arrived, and Kylo climbed after Hux. They took their usual first row seats.

“But…” he replied, rubbing a hand on his face, “I though that you didn’t get caught. That it was like the sine qua non of your plans. How did he know it was you?”

Hux peeled his gloves out and checked the time on his phone before replying: “He doesn’t know. All he knows that I look like a snitch. That’s all he’s been saying for two years. ‘Hux is a dirty snitch,’ when I warned him that he shouldn’t try to do chemistry while wearing flip-flops and Miss Jennings happened to hear it. And after that, making a habit of greeting me with ‘Everyone shut up, the tattler is among us’ for no reason whatsoever and calling me the Informant. Can you believe that, a guy wearing flip-flops at school passing judgment on me?”

But he didn’t really seem to expect an answer from Kylo. He looked out through the bus window, his gloves gripped in his right hand. His eyes were very pale, like the clouds were reflected in them or something. Through gritted teeth he added: “Well, at least now he has a reason.”

Kylo took a gamble and put his hand on Hux’s forearm, trying to call him back to the present moment, away from the pain he didn’t want to admit he felt and the cold and brutal way he tried to deal with it. Hux turned away from the glass and looked at where Kylo’s hand connected with him.

“That…was a dangerous thing to do, you know,” Kylo said. “That guy seemed really pissed off. Like, almost mad.”

“It may very well ruin his record for college applications,” Hux conceded, eyebrow furrowed. “But I didn’t need your help. I could have had him hit the ground with a simple advancing foot sweep. The fool wouldn’t even have understood what happened to him.”

Even as he said that he seemed happy to yield to Kylo’s touch. Kylo grinned, oddly pleased.

“What?” Hux asked, looking a bit self-conscious for the first time in the course of the conversation.

“Nothing,” Kylo said, relieved that they were back to some degree of levity. “It’s really cool that you know how to do that. I only lift so, I only really rely on my strength to protect me.”

“I can show you, if you want,” Hux offered.

That had Kylo beaming. “Yeah? I’d really like that!”

* * *

They had gone to Hux’s. Apparently his father was on one of his monthly trips to a destination Hux didn’t really bother letting himself be aware of. Kylo didn’t dare to ask questions about his father, because Hux’s aura when mentioning him really didn’t invite to it. It wasn’t like he really gave a fuck about Hux’s father anyway. Or any father really. This time Hux had made some banana and mango smoothie. Looking at the fruit getting reduced to a pulp seemed to relax him. Kylo amused himself by looking inside the cupboards. They were mostly empty.

“Drink that,” Hux said, pressing a glass in his hand.

“Thanks Hux,” Kylo answered, distracted from his snooping around.

The ginger, leaning against the counter, eyed him thoughtfully during the time it took him to down his own share of the mixture

“So, are you ready to be humiliated?” was what he said when he set his glass down.

Kylo snickered. “Always, I’m afraid.”

Hux led him in his room. It was a big white room, with white book shelves and white curtains. The bed was neatly made, there was no mess left on the desk. But some clothes were hanging on the chair and a mug had been left on the nightstand. A sort of map of the galaxy was pinned against the wall, but there wasn’t much decoration apart from that. It really didn’t look anything like the stuffy atmosphere of Kylo’s own room. Hux closed the door after them, even if they were alone in the house.

“So what was it that you planned on inflecting on that sorry bastard?” Kylo asked with a smirk.

“An advancing foot sweep,” Hux answered. Seeing Kylo’s expecting face, he went into further explanations. “It’s really quite simple. When your opponent moves to attack you, he takes a step forward and he’s going to put his weight into it right?”

“Right,“ Kylo said. Thrust Hux to make a fight brainy.

“All you have to do, really, is to watch and be fast,” Hux continued. “When he begins to move, grab both his arms and sweep his foot as he takes the step.”

“Sure,” Kylo said.

Hux gave him a sly smile. “You know what, let’s try it. Remove your shoes.”

Kylo kicked his shoes and socks off while Hux unlaced his. He had white feet with soft looking blue veins. Kylo didn’t know why the detail was important, but somehow it was.

“Okay,” Hux said when they were both ready, “come at me with all your strength.”

Kylo had the good grace not to question the order. He advanced on Hux, with the intent of shoving him on the bed. As soon as he took a step, Hux moved to meet him, grabbed at both the elbow of his hoodie, and with a fast arc, his feet caught Kylo’s ankle, and next thing he knew, Kylo was tumbling to the ground.

After a few second of stunned silence, he found his voice back: “Wow. That was…efficient. Does it still work if I know what you are going to do?”

“Let’s find out,” Hux offered with a sly smile.

Kylo got quite intimate with the ground of Hux’s room. But he picked up some movement fairly quickly and tried to give Hux a run for his money. It was quite refreshing –and disorienting– not to be able to use his fists. Hux seemed to be enjoying himself too, not even stopping to consider their difference of bulk when he tried to make Kylo roll over his shoulder. They were both laughing on the floor after a particularly noisy fall when Kylo took a breath and turned his head to look at Hux. His bright air was a mess now, spilling on the rug. He looked good like that, flushed from exercise and lost in the moment.

“Hux, I want you to know…” Kylo began, not really knowing how to phrase this feeling but feeling compelled to try and express it. “I just want you to have something in your life that is not revenge. You deserve more than that. You really do.”

Hux stopped laughing but his expression didn’t darken.

“I have,” he said, his eyes meeting Kylo’s. Suddenly the room felt very small.

“Are you ready for round two?”

“What do you mean, I haven’t lost round one yet!” Kylo exclaimed.

He only realized how much time had passed when his phone vibrated in his pocket. _Everything O.K. honey? Dinner is almost ready_ his mother had texted him.

* * *

Considering his social status, Kylo had evidently not bothered to concern himself with the so called Winter Ball, an event cheer leaders had been selling tickets to in the atrium for the last few days, to the merry sound of that god awful Frozen music. So he had no idea what Hux was talking about when he received a text from him at the end of first period saying _Have you seen it??_

It was very unlike Hux to put two interrogation marks together, so Kylo answered right away _What is it? Do you need me?_

He waited anxiously for the answer, but all Hux said was, _I’ll show you at lunch_.

As it turned out, someone had made a mock-poster to enter them for the contest of Winter King and Queen, as General Vicious McGinger and Cry-lo Ren. There was even a little drawing of a ginger with a scowl doing a Nazi salute, and a giant ugly girl next to him with outrageous black make-up and a deeply unhappy face. Hux had found the poster in the toilets. The authors hadn’t apparently dared to put them up in the hallways where teachers could have seen them.

“They could at least have drawn me a tiara,” Kylo said, considering the poster with what he hoped looked like detached indifference.

Hux snorted, but he didn’t seem as aloof as usual in the face of humiliation.

“I don’t see why someone took the time and effort to produce this shit,” Kylo said, trying to show Hux that he shouldn’t let it bother him. “That’s like, giving us credit of something. Acknowledging us.”

They decided to have lunch in the stairs leading to the top floor, because it was too cold to go outside, and going to the cafeteria would be pure suicide.

“That’s because they don’t even want us to have that,” Hux explained, halfway through his can, with a dejected voice.

He looked at his piece of sardine with melancholy, not caring about the dripping tomato sauce.

“To have what?” Kylo asked.

“Each other. They must think if they make fun of us for being together we’ll give it up or something.”

That made Kylo let out a disbelieving laugh.

“What? As if it would work!”

Hux smiled at him, but it somewhat lacked the heinous quality Kylo had come to appreciate about it. Hux let the piece of sardine fall back in the can and make a mess of splattered tomato sauce on the lino.

“God I hope my father doesn’t somehow find out. He’d kill me for debasing the title of General.”

* * *

It wasn’t even worth it to contemplate going to PE, and Hux didn’t really seem up to a confrontation right now, so Kylo suggested to skip the class. Gibbs probably hadn’t even noticed they existed, since he never bothered going through class lists. They hid into a sort of local where sports supplies where kept. It was left open because the student were supposed to put the basketballs back in place after the class. They just had to sit behind a pile of smelly gym mats not to be seen even if the door was left ajar. This was a great hideout to play games silently on your phone while waiting for bus hour, but it was a lot less great to prevent you from hearing nasty things about yourself. Which Hux and Kylo were often subjected to.

“You think the rumours are true? A female voice inquired. I mean, the poster must come from something.”

“No way. It’s a joke. Tucker and his gang hate them you know. They got into a fight and the nerds went moaning to the principal, don’t your remember?”

“Besides, added another voice, even Kylo Ren wouldn’t want that nasty ginger. Like anyone would touch him with a stick. You’d probably get rabies if you looked at him for too long.”

The voices eventually faded away. The class had begun ten minutes ago after all. Kylo’s heart was beating fast in his chest. His first instinct would have been to do something, but he had promised Hux not to be too impulsive. Faithful to himself, Hux had stayed next to him without moving an inch. Hunched over his phone he seemed to haven’t even heard anything. But Kylo could hear him breathing. He put a hand on his back. It seemed huge against Hux’s narrow shoulders. Hux wasn’t crying. He just let out a horribly tired sigh.

“Hux. Don’t listen to those cunts. I’d be glad to be your boyfriend.”

He had meant it as a way to lighten the atmosphere.

But Hux asked disbelievingly: “You would?”

“Yeah.”

“Why aren’t you then?” Hux said. He was fidgeting with his shoelace with his left hand, so Kylo guessed that he wasn’t joking.

“Aren’t what, you boyfriend?” Kylo asked, just to make sure.

“Obviously,” Hux answered in a seemingly detached tone. “That’s what we are talking about Kylo. And the test did say we were twin flames or whatever.”

Kylo didn’t really know how to get about this. But he had never been afraid to ask a hard question to Hux before, and he wouldn’t be afraid for that either.

“Okay. We’re talking seriously then. So…you’re gay?”

Hux shrugged. He was still worrying at his shoe.

“I guess. It’s quite hypothetical obviously since you’re the only human being worth talking to and I –of course– haven’t experienced the barest ounce of desire for anyone real. But yeah, I think the heavens have really blessed my father.”

“So, what you mean is that…I’m the only real life person you’ve felt attracted to? You are…attracted to me?” Kylo asked cautiously.

His audible embarrassment made Hux smirk. That was something at least.

“I’m attracted to you as a person. I don’t have like, wet dreams about you. You now that what really gets me going are documentaries about slaughter houses anyway.”

But Kylo was too taken by the honesty of their conversation to take the out that the joke obviously was. Hux had just said that he was attracted to him as a person. No one had ever told him anything like that.

“Oh…I see,” he managed, his voice low with emotion. “Well I…I’ve never really considered it to be honest. I mean, that you and me could be more than friends…I mean sometimes I can’t quite believe my luck that I have you as a friend so I never thought about anything more but… I…I’ll think about it if you want.”

Hux looked at him with an open face. Apparently his answer was acceptable.

“It’s okay, I was only just saying anyway. Forget it, it’s no big deal.”

But of course Kylo didn’t forget. How could he? Hux had basically admitted that he loved him, beyond even the romantic scope that his question had implied. He loved him because he trusted him enough not to make fun of him or reject him, because he was confident enough in their friendship to dare to test it, and because he had implied that if Kylo had more to offer him, he would want to take it. He wanted more of him. Kylo wasn’t just convenient to Hux. He was someone he loved. When they had became friends, Kylo had felt like his life was a lot less miserable. Now he felt like he could almost be happy.

But should he tell Hux that he loved him back? Because he definitely did, but did he want to be more than a friend to him? He wasn’t sure.

* * *

When he saw Hux again that week-end – they had decided to hang at the mall, for a lack of better things to do – and Hux smiled at him without self-doubt, Kylo decided to forego any vocal hello and instead hugged Hux against him.

“What’s that for?” Hux asked against his shoulder. But he was letting himself get manhandled with good enough grace.

“I’ve missed you.”

“We’ve only spent a day apart.”

Kylo laughed and hugged Hux a bit tighter. “You know what they say about me. I’m a sad emo. I have a legend to live up to.”

“You’re so big,” was all Hux answered him.

After that they went to look at art supplies. Hux had suggested that they keep a record of their accomplishments, because they had to “think positive” in the environment they were kept into. Kylo had said that if someone got their hands on their journal they’d be in big trouble. So Hux had said that they would commemorate events through obscure modernist poems and drawings that no one but them could understand. “Like a secret code,” Hux had said. Kylo had agreed, provided that the unifying design would be that everything would be black. “Appropriate,” Hux had said.

They chose a kind of big drawing notebook with a sturdy black cover and thick creamy paper, with various pencils and black ink. Hux paid for everything; Kylo would pay for the food. They had decided to get a proper tea with cucumber sandwiches and scones. Kylo had liked Hux’s memories about taking tea with his mother. But before that they went to Claire’s because Kylo wanted to buy new rings to put in his ears. They played for a while with ugly plastic jewellery in front of the mirror. A middle-schooler looked at them with distaste.

“Do you think I’m ugly?” Kylo asked, holding skull earrings next to his face, with nothing more than curiosity in his voice.

Hux snickered and handed him a bunch of fake diamonds.

“Hum…well you’re not handsome but I like your face. I like your big nose and your moles. And your wide mouth. I don’t know if it’s really objective.”

“It doesn’t need to be," Kylo said, pushing his hair away from his ears. "I like that your lashes are orange. Actually I like the whole ginger thing.”

“That’s because you’re a Satanist. Here take those, they’re the less tacky of the lot,” Hux told him, showing him a set of silver shapes, among which were hearts and spades.

* * *

“So, you really thought about it after all,” Hux said later, teacup just underneath his chin.

Kylo was in the process of putting jam on a half scone, and he felt himself blush, but met Hux’s eyes and smiled at him.

“How could you tell?” he asked.

“Well,” answered Hux, “you hugged me for one. And you asked me to tell you you were pretty.”

“I did not!”

“You might as well have,” he scoffed, not distracted from his warm cup.

Kylo cast his eyes down again to his knife.

“I just really can’t tell if I look okay or not,” he said. “You could like me only for my bright –err scratch that– personality.”

Hux laughed and took a sip before saying: “I do like your personality.”

“I know. What I mean is…well everybody seems to think…”

“Fuck everybody.” Hux interrupted him.

“Ha, I’ll drink to that.”

A moment passed before Hux asked again, in a less assured voice: “But…you thought about it?”

“Yeah…well I tried to imagine what it would be like. Like…touching you more. Just like, having my arm around your shoulders or hugging you. I wanted to try it.”

Kylo had the time to eat the scone and put some jam on his nose before the conversation resumed. It wasn’t exactly easy for any of them to offer their real thoughts on that subject.

“It felt…weird to have someone touch me not to hurt me,” Hux finally admitted.

“It felt nice having you against me,” Kylo countered.

“Yeah, that too.”

* * *

“I think I can find where Daryl lives,” Hux announced the following week. “Apparently there’s going to be a party at his house during the break. If I pretended I was interested to go I’m sure someone would give me the address, if only for the fun value of me showing up.”

They had taken to eat their lunch on the fourth floor stairs regularly, and sometimes Kylo amused himself by dropping bits of food over the rail. Today Hux had forgone his usual fish can for a piece of chicken in a plastic wrapping. He had his plotting face on. Kylo didn’t seem convinced though.

“Maybe…” he conceded, “but I just don’t see why we cannot use one of your usual methods of retribution. Why are you willing to got through all that trouble when he was hardly original himself?”

“Because he’s beneath you,” Hux hissed, stabbing his chicken. “He should be made known who his better is.”

He had talked with such a violent determination that Kylo was taken aback, but at the same time he felt a kind of dark excitement uncoil inside him. He ducked his head and asked:

“Is he?” He clarified: ”Beneath me?”

Hux didn’t even swallow his mouthful in such a rush he was to answer: “If we weren’t inhibited by the rule of the hypocrites, you’d crush him.”

Kylo had the feeling that this wasn’t just about Daryl. Sure, Hux spat at _turn the other cheek_ and snorted at _an eye for an eye_. Vengeance was a sevenfold affair for him. But it felt like this obsession with making Daryl suffer was a desperate attempt at aiming _somewhere_ after the horrible business of the Winter Ball poster. They didn’t know who had created it, but in a way it felt like the whole school was responsible. All the faces, known and unknown, that he saw in the hallways or in class tacitly approved of what the poster said. The poster existed because of their common understanding of Hux and Kylo’s abject worthlessness. Hux hadn’t brought it up again, but Kylo could sometimes see in the hard set of his jaw that he hadn’t forgotten, that he was just letting it fester into something cruel inside him.

Did Hux’s passionate quest against the whole word really bother him thought? In the chaos that Kylo felt his life to be, in the confusion of half repressed feelings and aborted desires, in the commotion of failures and discouragement that was the pool where his thoughts floated, it looked something like purpose and order.

* * *

Kylo really didn’t expect to spend a nice Christmas. First of all, it had been years since he had enjoyed Christmas at all. There was nothing worse than seeing a family member’s disappointed face when he couldn’t hide how terribly they had miscalculated their present to him. Plus his Dad unmistakably ended up drinking too much and reminiscing rowdily with an odd collection of friends he insisted Kylo called his uncles. His actual uncle, Luke, always looked like it caused him great pain to be among them, and his little cousin Rey annoyed him because of how fondly his mother looked at her, like she was the sweet child she would have dreamt of having instead of him. On top of that, he actively missed something this year, as Hux had gone to spend the holiday with his mother in Essex. He couldn’t even console himself with the fact that Daryl had his comeuppance coming to him, because Hux hadn’t been happy to settle on anything just yet. So really, although it was a break from the doom and gloom of school, the holidays were also an awful drag.

But on the morning of the 23rd, Leia cried from below the stairs: “Kylo, there’s a letter for you!” When there was no response she added: “It’s from your friend Hux,” which got Kylo crashing down the stairs soon enough.

Inside the parcel there was a pair of cheap earrings in the shape of foxes, painted in a bright orange varnish. There was also a note. “Since you like _the whole ginger thing._ Hope you have a not too terrible Christmas. See you not soon enough.” And below that, there was Hux’s signature, neatly written with a fountain pen. Kylo was stunned for a moment. Then, when he had absorbed the shock, he went in a burst of hyperactivity, so incompressible was his glee. He vacuum-cleaned the living room under the baffled supervision of his father, rearranged the spice rack for his mother and shovelled snow in front of the garage.

But he managed to wait until the 24th midnight, to send a text in response.

KYLO, 00:00 _OMG that is the sweetest thing ever you monster! You made me cry. ILY_

He received an answer less than a minute later, which simply said: _Good_

 


	3. An Eyeful of Tears

 

They exchanged texts again toward the end of the break. Han had told Kylo that he wouldn’t pay any extra on his phone bill, so he had only chatted with Hux via messenger, to which Hux had access only when he found some decent Wi-Fi. Which was to say that Kylo was experimenting some kind of withdrawal that had to be fixed as soon as possible.

He decided to break his text abstinence the last Friday night.

KYLO, 22.20 _You’re coming back tomorrow right? Can I see you right away? Say yes._

HUX, 22.44 _Are you crazy I’ll barely be human with the jetlag_

KYLO, 22.47 _Oh yeah sorry_

KYLO _, 22:49 Can I come fetch you @your house monday morning then?_

HUX, 22:52 _No you fool_

HUX, 22:52 _I’ve got a better idea: sleepover at yours Sunday night?_

KYLO, 22:54 _Genius!!! Mum says she’ll make you dinner!_

 

* * *

 

Dinner turned out to be a roast with lentils and quinoa.

“Kylo told me you liked proteins,” Leia explained with a smile, not quite sure if it was true or if it was a strange prank from her son.

“I do, thank you Mrs Organa.” Hux answered politely. He smiled at Kylo while drawing his chair back.

The Organa-Solo’s dinning room was a collection of mix-and-match furniture, of widely different styles and times, which had all been covered in a coat of white paint to produce a sense of harmony. An old sideboard had its drawers threatening to spill on the floor. The walls were covered with family and vacation pictures. The rug underneath the table was very soft, and the lights were dim and warm. Someone had even put on some music. This was not really how Hux had pictured Kylo’s home, even if Kylo had warned him that his parents were “hippies”. When he had rang at the door, trying not to stress too much about this, he had unconsciously began to mentally chant his usual mantra _it’s caring that enable suffering, it’s caring that enable suffering, it’s caring_ …and then the door had opened on Kylo’s awful big smile.

“So, how was England Hux?” Han asked, apparently very amused by the whole situation. Kylo had to admit that he didn’t have much training hosting his son’s guests. He suspected that his mum had tried to brief him for the evening, but that never went really well with his dad.

“To be completely honest with you,” Hux answered pleasantly, “the Christmas dinner involved a bit too much Brussels sprouts for my taste.”

Kylo hoped that this father would understand that answer as an invitation not to delve any deeper in the subject. But Han laughed obliviously at the comment, before designing the two foxes adorning his son’s left ear.

“Nice earrings by the way. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but Ben has a whole collection of them,” Han said conversely.

“Who’s Ben?” Hux asked back, his voice betraying nothing, but his chin up and defiant.

You could hear cutlery clinging against the plates in the silence that followed. Kylo was torn between resentment against his father and pure gratitude towards Hux. The jazz record was still playing its sweet cool music from one corner of the room.

“Err, I mean, Kylo’s collection.” Han corrected almost immediately. “Sorry kid,” he said to his son with a smile. ”Takes time getting used to.”

“Three years apparently,” Kylo pointed out, but he was a lot calmer than he’d ever been concerning that issue.

Leia’s voice cut through the silence with as much cheer as one could decently muster: “Boys, who’d like some more of that roast?”

 

* * *

 

As soon they were safely retrenched in his cramped up bedroom, Kylo told Hux – with absolutely no chill he was loath to admit – “I’ve got a Christmas present for you too.”

Actually, he had agonised about this. About whether it would be too much. Or not enough. Or plain ridiculous. Or if he assumed too much. He had thought about getting something else when he was wrapping the present because _How the hell would Hux take it?_ But in the end he trusted his friend.

So what Hux unwrapped, seated on the carpet of Kylo’s room, was a copy of the _Symposium_ , with the test about the soul mates and its result page folded inside. Kylo heard the wrapper getting torn, the pages being turned, the pages being unfolded. In a second he would look at Hux to see his expression, just…not right now.

“This is so cheesy,” Hux said a lot sooner than expected.

Feeling a bit betrayed, Kylo finally lifted his eyes only to meet a blur of orange hair and suddenly he was being hugged. Hux was on his knees, hunched over him, his arms thrown over Kylo’s neck, his whole torso pressed against him. He smelled good, like warmth and life. And a bit like roast too Kylo guessed.

“You like it then?” he asked, smiling now, looping his arms around Hux’s narrow waist.

“This is completely ridiculous, just like you,” Hux’s muffled voice replied, and Kylo had never heard him sound so happy.

“I think we have to watch one of these very violent Korean movies now, to re-equilibrate the scales.” Hux said after a while. But Kylo didn’t let them disentangle right away.

 

* * *

 

They had watched the movie shoulder against shoulder, tight against tight. In the end Hux had even let his head fall against Kylo, even though how he was able to relax in front of so perturbing acts of violence was quite a mystery to Kylo. Then the movie was over, and it was time for bed, which now seemed both perfectly natural and incredibly intimidating to share. Especially in this floating moment when they turned off the computer and went to brush their teeth and change their clothes.

But like for everything else in their friendship, they managed to overcome the embarrassment and decided to sleep head to tail, in true sleepover fashion, as neither of them had ever had the opportunity to experience it before. Kylo had the luxury of having a double bed. His father had took pity on him when he grew past 6 feet and made his twin bed look like a square sponge.

Once they had settled in nicely though, each of them having arranged pillows to his liking at one end of the bed, covers and plaids in place and even an old teddy bear at his post near Kylo’s bed table, Hux frowned deeply and exclaimed:

“Oh no, I forgot my pajama socks!” His pleasure at having found an adequate installation was apparently ruined.

“What’s that?” Kylo enquired.

“Well, socks that you put on to sleep of course. I have special fuzzy socks for bed.”

“That’s strange,” Kylo said, puzzled. “Why would you wear socks to bed?”

“Touch my feet,” was the annoyed response.

Kylo extended his arm, and grabbed Hux’s bony ankle. His hands went to the toes and they were ice cold.

“Do they stay like that all night?” He asked.

“Yeah, it’s damn annoying.” Hux grumbled. “I can’t go out without gloves either. “

“Yeah, I noticed. Wait a sec, I’ll get you fixed.” Kylo said, jumping out of bed.

He got to his closet in two strides and disappeared behind the door.

“Please, not those dreadful sport socks, my feet are too sensitive,” Hux said, his nose barely above the cover.

“Don’t worry, only the best for your feet.” And indeed Kylo did bring him the softer jumper he owned, a light blue thing that his mum had bought for him and that he had of course hardly ever worn. He reached under the covers and wrapped Hux’s feet in it, tying the sleeves together so that it wouldn’t drift away in the bed too soon.

“There,” decreed Kylo before getting back into bed himself. He got settled onto his pillow, turned the light off, and took Hux’s wrapped feet in his big hands, tucked them against his chest. They felt cold even through the cloth.

“Thanks.” Hux said with a little voice. Kylo felt Hux’s body fall progressively asleep, the tension in his feet go away and his breathing deepening. His eyes closed, and he smiled into the darkness.

Kylo woke up around 3am, to go to the bathroom. When he went back into his room, which was dimly lit by a ray of moon passing through the curtains, he hesitated. But they had decided something when they were both awake, and now Hux was sleeping, so he went back to bed in their upside down arrangement.

In the morning however, when his progressive alarm pulled him out of sleep, he found himself snuggling against Hux’s legs, his fine red hairs ticking his skin pleasantly. Kylo’s nose was warm against Hux’s skin. He opened one of his eyes with great difficulty, and turned the alarm off before it became too noisy. His room was on the right side but he still felt a little out of balance. Hux’s lithe body was warm against him, but his feet, tangled in Kylo’s hands, were a little cold. One of his hands reposed on Kylo’s right ankle underneath the blanket, and Kylo could feel the rise and fall of his chest against his left heel. Kylo stretched luxuriously, willing to commit to memory the soothing warmth and presence of the other boy. He took him a few minutes before he could manage:

“Hux?”

“Hmm?”

“Are we falling in love?”

Hux didn’t answer right away, as if he wasn’t awake enough for words. Kylo didn’t mind. Strangely, he hadn’t asked the question with any sense of trepidation; it was only something that had occurred to him in the light of the morning.

“Seems likely,” Hux finally managed to mumble between two yawns. “I mean, that would seem the best interpretation for the situation.”

“I like that we’re doing this together,” Kylo admitted, squeezing both of Hux’s calves against him.

“Would be quite sad if we were doing it on our own,” Hux said, always the voice of reason. But his thumb was drawing lazy patterns on Kylo’s ankle.

 

* * *

 

Resuming school however, was like a cold shower. Kylo was inclined to believe that people had taken the New Year’s resolution to outdo themselves to make his life miserable. The new hype joke was to tell him “Hi Kylo” with the most stock photo smile possible whenever you crossed path with him. He had naively answered hi back the first few times, quite flustered by this new development, but soon he had heard girls snickering between them right after saluting him, and a few guys had presented their hands for a high five and retracted them just in time to humiliate him in the most delightful way.

"My life is a nightmare,” he said to Hux. “I’m becoming a fucking meme.”

“We are slowly but surely becoming popular,” Hux countered, slurping a protein enriched yogurt drink. “People are not aware of what is happening to them, we are penetrating their subconscious.”

Kylo snorted. “How do you come up with this shit?” he asked, amused.

But the truth was that he was still very wary of the whole business. He couldn’t bear to resolve himself to a life of parking lot grass patch and people saying even the most innocuous word of the English language ironically to him. He wasn’t as strong as Hux. He couldn’t rely on the certitude that they were wrong as much as his friend did.

“I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here,” he muttered, reducing his juice box into tiny pieces.

“There’s not too long to wait now.” Hux told him. “I’ll be already be immensely relieved when I turn 18 in March. I know it won’t change much in my daily life, but it’ll be such a liberation to know that my dad cannot order me around anymore.”

Hux was wearing a new navy blue jacket today, and it made him look even more pristine than usual, even seated next to a dustbin. Kylo got up to stretch his legs and Hux followed him for a digestive walk between the cars. He knew pretty well which one belonged to whom by now.

“Is your Dad so terrible?” he asked Hux while stepping deliberately into a puddle to test the waterproofness of his boots.

Hux raised an eyebrow at him, choosing not to comment on the childishness of his activities.

“Honestly, he makes all the school bullies look like complete amateurs,” he answered with apparent detachment. But he was silent for a moment before asking: “What about you? When is your birthday?”

A gust of wind made Kylo’s hair dance around his face and then fell into his eyes. He passed a hand through them and kept it there.

“Hum…it’s in June, “ he answered, “but…I’m already 18. I got held back a year.”

His neck had reddened, because even if he tried to fight it, the admission shamed him.

“Why?” Hux asked simply, hugging his jacket tighter around him.

Kylo could brush the question away. He could say something generic, or make a joke, and Hux would know not to press on the subject. But who else would ever ask? Who else would ever be interested? He took a step toward Hux and put one of his arm around his shoulders, to share some body heat. He certainly couldn’t say that inside, where they might be overheard.

“Well…I was really fucked up in the head when I was fifteen,” he began. “My parents were going through a bad phase, always arguing. I…please understand that…well I suppose there isn’t really any justification for that, but I kind of wanted them to divorce. It was a time when the only thing that felt real to me was pain. I was always fucking up on purpose, so my mother sent me at my uncle Luke’s for a vacation. I think she needed a break. It hurt and it felt good to be rejected. I felt like…like I could be free or something.”

He waited for a bit to see if Hux wanted to say something, but he didn’t. So he carried on walking, doubling over their footsteps.

“There was this guy who lived near my uncle…he called himself Snoke. I met him at a kind of street basketball playground. He was kind of weird. He liked to talk to me…he was always declaiming grand things about the meaning of life. I felt special that he thought I could understand. I talked to him about my parents, and he…kind of gave me advice to make them upset. To hurt them…I knew that it was wrong, but…I liked to listen…to contemplate what he was saying …I even took some notes. It was kind of a twisted pleasure to know that I could be destructive, that I could have an impact. I was not really thinking of doing it, but I guessed I kind of discovered the power of thinking with that experience. Then my uncle found my notes and it got even worse. I think I kind of left them lying around on purpose. It was a horrible year and I just couldn’t deal with school. When I repeated it I decided that I didn’t want to be Ben anymore. But since then… or really since forever I guess, I really struggle with people and unsaid rules and what is expected of me in life…”

He wasn’t sure if he had managed to convey anything at all. There wasn’t much about the events in themselves, it was more about the mental state he had been in. That he was still in, in some way, when he felt that he deserved every nasty things that had been done or said to him at school. He brought Hux closer to him, his big hand clasping his arm, to comfort himself.

“So, I guess you don’t really want to go to college then,” Hux said, not commenting on the rest. Kylo guessed that it was a lot to absorb, and he wasn’t expecting Hux to come up with some therapist meaningful bullshit anyway. It was enough that he had stayed at his side, that he was leaning against him just now, not rejecting him.

“No, you’re right,” he answered. “Not now anyway. I get like, physical pain when I think about it. I just don’t want to fail something else. I just want to do something that I feel I can do for once.”

“I’m not going to college either,” Hux declared.

Kylo let his arm fall from around his shoulder and stopped walking. “What? Hux, why? You’re brilliant!”

“I know. I’m going to become an engineer through the army. I don’t want to owe my dad anything.”

“Oh,” Kylo mellowed. “That kind of make sense I guess.”

Hux looked very sure of himself. “Plus, that’s where they have all the money to make big weapons,” he added, tucking his arm back into Kylo’s.

Kylo actually laughed at that. Trust Hux to make a career out of crafting doom.

 

* * *

 

 _Revenge time_ , Hux had texted him a few days later. Kylo was always happy for a reason to skip classes, so he met Hux in the B corridor.

Apparently Hux’s class was off to a field trip, and he had pretexted parental interdiction to stay behind. Today they would have the pleasure of making Emily Howell’s life a little less enjoyable. She had had the misfortune of being heard by Hux when she partook in the latest trend of saying “Hi Kylo” with third degree sarcasm.

Hux waited for Kylo to arrive to pick the lock of the locker he was standing in front of.

When Kylo asked him how the fuck he knew how to do that, Hux shrugged and answered “YouTube tutorial. This things are really basic.” After a quick rummaging, he extracted a pair of rollerblades from the locker. He closed the locker and motioned for Kylo to follow him into the empty classroom. He took a chair, as if he planned on immerging himself in a perfectly benign occupation, and set himself to unscrew the little wheels one by one. Kylo was to rub some sugary soy sauce on the inside soles.

They started to work. Hux cleared his throat.

“Hey, Kylo,” He began with an undercurrent of uncertainty that was quite unusual for him, “I was thinking…I was thinking about when we should have our first kiss. Or rather about if we should have our first kiss.”

Kylo tried not to blush furiously, but he could hardly help it. His hand had difficulties slithering inside the rollerblade shoes and he tried to distract himself with the friction.

“What…what do you mean?” He asked to buy himself some time. Hux didn’t take the bait. “I mean…why shouldn’t we? That is, if we wanted to, I mean, obviously.”

Hux seemed very concentrated on his unscrewing. His fingers worked deftly.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to,” he said.

“I don’t,” Kylo answered right away. “Feel like I have to.” He was making a right mess with the sticky sauce and it was beginning to smell. Maybe Hux had changed his mind now that he knew how much of a psycho he was, and was trying to backpedal.

“Maybe not right now. But maybe one day you’ll feel obligated to, to please me or something…I know that you…need approval,” Hux said carefully.

Relief flooded through Kylo. So Hux was concerned, not repulsed. Kylo knew he hadn’t said the thing about his needing approval to be mean. He had said it because he was observant and it was true. Because he didn’t want to take advantage of him. That was why he liked Hux so much. His thoughts could be as delicate as they could be vicious.

“Why, do you think I don’t want you?” He decided to answer, his voice a bit strangled.

“Well,” Hux pointed out with a flick of his screwdriver, “it had never occurred to you that you could want me before I suggested it to you.”

Kylo decided he was done with the sauce. “Listen. I may be dense, but I seem to recall that I was the one to say I’d be glad to be your boyfriend. It must have occurred to me somehow, even if you beat me to the analysis of the situation.”

Hux gave him a small smile. “Point conceded,” he said.

“Well, stop worrying then,” Kylo told him, smiling. The soy sauce was a bitch to get off, shreds of tissue staying stuck to his fingers instead of doing their job of wiping them. “If I haven’t kissed you yet it’s not because I’m not sure about you, it’s because I’m not sure about this whole kissing business. What if I suck at it and end up stifling you?”

Hux let out a small laugh at that. He began working on the second blade.

“So, I take it you’ve never done it before?” he asked Kylo.

“Of course I’ve never been kissed,” Kylo said easily. “I basically have the plague.” Then suspiciously, “Have you?”

Hux sniggered. “Honestly you could just hold my hand, I’m sure it’d feel overwhelmingly thrilling already.”

Kylo thought about it. About taking Hux’s hand in his own one morning while they got out of the bus. But the though only made him dizzy, and his hands clammy. He was too attached to Hux to want to possess him. Because everything he owned got damaged in a way or in another.

 

* * *

 

“Hi Kylo” said Damien, a guy from biology class, for the third time that Monday.

He just couldn’t take it anymore. Kylo shoved him so hard that the guy tripped on his own leg and went sprawling to the ground.

“Hi fucker,” he greeted back through his teeth.

Kylo thought Hux was going to tell him off for being physical, but Hux said that people would carry on if he didn’t do something to make them fear retribution, and so that he had done well. Kylo was pleasantly surprised. It was kind of nice to have Hux as a sort of Jiminy Cricket. Although, Jiminy Cricket probably wouldn’t give the same kind of advice.

Doyle Hicks, who was famous for making the handball team loose their last match, tried the popular joke two days later, when Hux and Kylo where walking toward the back of the building to have lunch, and Hux gave a brief nod in answer to Kylo’s questioning eyes. Kylo proceeded to deliver a punch to the stomach of the offender, a rush of satisfaction coursing through him at the feeling of knocking someone’s breath out.

Hux bent his back a little to tell the boy who was clutching at his middle, profanities flowing from his mouth: “When you tell that little story to the sorry idiots you call friends, make sure to tell them that Kylo doesn’t plan on going to college. Make sure to let them know that he is not afraid to dirty his record a little.”

Kylo felt that Hux was going to attract retributions on his own head with such a move. But the meme seemed to have run it course after that.

 

* * *

 

That Sunday it was particularly sunny for a February morning. Kylo entered the living room all clad in black at an hour he would normally still have been lounging around in loose pajama pants.

“Hey Dad, can I ask you for a ride?”

“Sure,” Han said, dropping his paper, amused at the nice tone his son had tried to take. It was really rare that Kylo asked for help or anything that implied spending extra time with his parents, so he wasn’t going to make him plead and scare him off.

“Where do you want to go?”

Kylo gave him a half embarrassed smile.

“You know how Hux does judo right?” Han raised his eyebrows at that, with a smile that said he knew it all too well.

“Well,” Kylo continued without taking the bait, “he told me he was competing this weekend, to improve his belt or something. Here, he sent me the dojo’s location on Google maps.”

They had been in the car for a few minutes only when Han decided to break the silence with small talk.

“So,” he asked in his cool dad voice, “how’s your boyfriend doing lately anyway? I didn’t know he was into competition.”

Kylo’s blood pulsed into his ears. “My boyfriend?” he heard himself ask, but he really felt like he was only witnessing the scene he had just be thrown into.

“Yes, you now, Hux. Don’t any of you kids use your first names anymore nowadays?” Han joked easily.

But Kylo remained very serious. “Why do you call him my boyfriend?” Was his dad making fun of them too? He willed himself not to get angry too soon.

Han seemed to lose a bit of his countenance at that.

“He’s not? I…sorry I shouldn’t have presumed, I just thought…”

“Do we look like a couple?” Kylo interrupted him, but for his outburst his voice still sounded uncertain.

“I really thought you were one.” Han answered carefully, his eyes on the road and his movements cool and controlled as he drove on. “I thought that was why you introduced us at dinner.”

They remained silent for a moment. Kylo had the nightmarish vision of his parents discussing him and Hux before going to bed after that roast and quinoa dinner. But was he really surprised?

“I…I mean maybe there is something happening…” he admitted, before adding with much more certainty “I _do_ like him a lot.”

“Yeah kid, I figured that much, people don’t look at their friends the way you look at him,” Han laughed, apparently relieved that the conversation hadn’t turned into an awful raw as only Kylo could nurture them.

Kylo sighed, slumping back into his seat. “I wouldn’t know,” he said a bit dramatically, because, why not.

“Well, I’m happy you’ve found someone anyway son. That you have a good thing in your life,” Han said, smiling. “I mean it. And he really seems to care about you. Hell, he wasn’t afraid to stand up to me for you the first time we met!” The memory made him laugh with no hard feeling. “So you know…don’t be afraid to go for it.”

Kylo frowned. His life wasn’t some kind of cheesy movie where everything was so simple and he could just _go for things_.

 

* * *

 

The room was in a flurry of activity when Han and Kylo arrived. Apparently, the competition had started hours ago, with the fights of the younger judoka, and they had arrived during the break right before Hux’s age range session. Even if he towered over the crowd, Kylo got on his tiptoes to try and see if he could pick up bright red hair somewhere. Han was more efficient and took advantage of the spectators –a flock of parents armed with cameras, and snotty siblings– coming and going to the toilets or to get beverages to take possessions of seats in the third row of the stands.

“Don’t fidget, you’ll see him soon enough,” Han said, making himself as confortable as possible on the bench. “Is he any good?” he asked when Kylo, his elbows on his knees, didn’t seem able to stop tapping his foot nervously.

“Oh yeah, he wiped the floor with me,” Kylo said enthusiastically.

Han mumbled to himself. The kid did seem a bit scrawny, but he certainly wasn’t a judo expert.

The competition resumed a few minutes later. The matches were interesting enough and Kylo tried to memorize some of the moves to ask about them later. Finally, Hux appeared. He was wearing a bright blue judogi and a stern face. Kylo’s heart began beating as if he was the one stepping on the tatami himself. His own muscles contracted in anticipation as he leaned forward. Hux saluted his opponent impassively and the fight begun. Immediately the two boys were grabbing each other and grappling. The fighter in white was aggressive and charged bodily into Hux. The spectacle was gripping.

One second Kylo was holding his breath because surely, that move would make Hux fall; but the next he was gasping because Hux had somehow managed to hook his foot somewhere and the situation was completely reversed. He used tricks as well, focusing his opponent attention on one leg, and then sapping his balance with the other in a silver quick motion. At one point he even surged from underneath his opponent and with some kind of rotation was able to send him into a full wheel. You could hear the violence of the effort as the bodies shocked together and hit the floor. Somewhere during the fight Hux’s top was wrenched from his belt and his opponent’s shoulder left an angry red mark on his white skin. What impressed Kylo the most was that, even when he was falling, Hux was still moving, dragging the other fighter with him or even tossing him over his head. He was still thinking even as he was falling, still thinking when he was breathing heavily and his whole body strained with effort. He was always thinking and that’s why he won.

Kylo felt a rush of adrenaline go to his head, and suddenly he was standing, stepping on the bench and shouting with joy. His pleasure was multiplied when Hux seemed to hear him and found his eyes. One of the organisers started making a speech as the athletes vacated the floor and Kylo stepped and almost tripped on a few feet and bags while trying to make his way down as quickly as possible.

After displacing some people to get a better view and decide how to make his way, Kylo found Hux near a table, picking up a bottle of water. He took the last strides that remained to get to him.

“Hux, that was beautiful!”

 

Hux wasn’t even startled. He gulped his water, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His cheeks were pink, and he looked very pleased with himself. He waited for one or two people that had come to congratulate him to get away before giving is whole attention to Kylo.

“Yeah, you liked it?” he asked with a smirk.

Kylo could see that there was something mischievous in his eyes. He hadn’t bothered to tie his judogi properly again and Kylo had never seen him look so carefree and unguarded.

“Oh yeah,” he said, suddenly feeling shy. “I could just…watch you fight all day.”

Hux looked at him, not saying a word, but saying something with his eyes, or maybe his posture or the way his smile had gone slack. Kylo couldn’t properly identify what it was

“You…you looked hot”, he admitted in a half whisper, smiling a bit coyly, surprised by his own admission.

Hux still said nothing, he just took a breath. A blush was creeping in dots along his neck.

“Victory really suits you,” Kylo added, and it almost stayed stuck in his throat.

He saw Hux swallow and get closer, his cheeks pink, his eyes and his lips glistening. He felt the hand on his biceps. He saw Hux’s orange lashes, the bluish translucence of his eyelid. He felt his own stomach contract on itself as if it had been suddenly emptied. And then he felt Hux mouth sweetly pressing against his own.

Drums suddenly started beating in Kylo ears. He could hardly feel Hux, so much he felt like the ground was crumbling underneath him. He couldn’t breathe. He pushed Hux away from him.

It took a few seconds for Hux to open his eyes again. He looked at Kylo, at the distance he had put between them. He stayed speechless. His brows furrowed in concentration, his mouth turned down, his nostril flared and Kylo saw his face slowly and silently collapse on itself, almost imperceptivity.

“I…”Kylo tried, almost muted by distress. “I…”

But someone was calling them, walking toward them. It was Han, waving at them. In his peripheral vision, Kylo saw Hux bring a hand to his face.

“Hey kiddo,” Han said when he had reached them, oblivious to the silent tension, “great fight! Do you need a ride home?”

“Thank you Mr Solo,” Hux declined with cold politeness, tucking neatly his vest in his belt. “My father has reserved a taxi for me.”


	4. A Mouthful of Spit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who commented or left kudos! I'm happy to have accomplished one of my goals for 2017, which was to publish something on a03. The bad news is that this is the last chapter, but the good news is that it is longer than the others!

The week that followed, Hux avoided Kylo. He didn’t take the bus in the morning. He wasn’t on the parking lot patch of grass or at the fourth floor stairs at lunch hour. Kylo tried to wait for him after the classes he knew he took, but Hux eluded him like a ghost. He was as efficient at that as he was at everything else.

Kylo had managed to ruin everything. All Hux had wanted was to be kissed. To share the joy of his victory with him. To show him that he could be vulnerable even if protecting himself was what he knew how to do best. Kylo felt like he had crushed him, when Hux had done nothing but offer him something so personal and thrusting. He couldn’t even fathom why he had reacted the way he did. They _had_ discussed it after all. Why did he had to act like a freak as his default mode?

It had been a long time since Kylo had felt so bad. Since Hux found him crying in the toilets actually. His absence felt like a terrible unease in his gut, a desire to collapse without managing to because he was too distressed.

A girl mimicked a blowjob at him in the cafeteria Wednesday and he felt like crying.

When he got home, he tried looking at the black notebook of vengeance that he had started to fill with Hux. But there were only a few pages of mad scribbling and absurd splotches of black paint, and all they did was fill him with unbearable longing.

He tried to go to the gym to exert his frustration, but he just went through the motions without feeling anything much. Weirdly, his parents didn’t comment on his dejected attitude. Maybe Han had seen them and drew his own conclusions. He knew to stay away. Kylo would snap if his dad tried to bring the subject up. He knew he would.

Tuesday morning he sent yet another text to Hux. He had sent him at least a hundred messages since the judo competition on the weekend.

KYLO 07:37 _I’m miserable without you_

He kept his eyes riveted to his phone during all the time he took him to eat his breakfast and get ready, but the screen stayed black.

KYLO _8:23 Please take the bus with me_

He checked his phone three times to see if he hadn’t missed an answer, and was dead last to climb into the bus. The driver even told him off for delaying everyone.

KYLO _12:05 I miss you, where are you?_

KYLO _16:07 I’m leaving. It’s raining_

KYLO _20:12 We had cod at dinner. It was disgusting._

KYLO _22:22 Happy 22:22_

Kylo waited. Why would Hux answer such a silly text when he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge all the others? But Kylo’s need served him as a replacement of hope. He waited in vain for an hour, not being able to do anything productive with himself. He muffled a cry of frustration in his pillow. His pillowcase was beginning to stink and he vaguely thought that maybe he ought to open his window to vent his room but he couldn’t really bring himself to care.

KYLO _23:40 I know I’m an absolute idiot_

KYLO _23:43 I just can’t do this anymore Hux. Please answer me_

He still didn’t receive anything back. He wished Hux would just yell at him, or hit him. That night he dreamt that Hux started bullying him at school, and all he could feel was relief at getting him back.

On Thursday he had to force himself to go to school. He just felt so empty waking up that he couldn’t even feel sadness anymore. He decided to go alone to the cafeteria at lunch hour out of spite for himself. He deserved to feel alone and be mocked. He sat by himself at an empty table, some snickers accompanying him in the distance. He knew what he must look like, with his depressed face and the hair he hadn’t bothered to wash in three days. He forced himself to eat but the food was so bland and bleak that it was hard to swallow.

“So, I hear that McGinger dumped you?” a guy taunted him when he saw him alone.

It was Caleb, the one Hux had made a mortal enemy off by telling on him. His teeth were bared, a mean pleasure distorting his features.

“I guess even you can’t suffer him, ha?” he added, eyes alight with petty triumph.

Kylo threw his glass at him, spilling coke in the air. But he hadn’t really aimed, and it was plastic anyway. Everybody laughed like he was a small and ridiculous bull. So he picked up his tray and flung it in Caleb’s face too. He stomped out of the cafeteria and the commotion that he had created without even feeling an ounce of satisfaction.

 

* * *

 

On Saturday he was ready to break anything. He just couldn’t go back to living like this.

He decided to go and confront Hux at his house. He couldn’t really make it any worse than that anyway. He took a long shower, put on clean clothes, his long black coat, and walked to Hux’s house, trying not to second-guess each of his steps.

He rang at the door and a stern looking man with auburn hair showed himself on the threshold.

“Hum, hello,” Kylo said nervously. “I’m a friend of Hux’s. I mean…of Armitage’s.” The name felt weird and foreign on his tongue and he was stressed out.

The man took a moment to assess him and finally said with mild distate: “Wait here.”

A few minute later Hux appeared at the door, hugging a big pullover to his body. Kylo could have cried from relief at the sight. He struggled for words.

“Let’s not do that here,” Hux said, and began briskly walking away from the house.

Kylo followed him silently, wriggling his hands, all the things he had practiced saying forgotten. Hux looked calm, but then he did most of the time, even when he wasn’t. After a while, Kylo realised that Hux was walking toward the mart.

“What do you want?” Hux finally asked, business like, when he decided they had walked far enough.

“ _What do I want_?” Kylo repeated, incredulous. “I want to fucking see you and speak with you and be with you. I want you to stop fucking ignoring me.”

Hux looked hurt. “I thought you wanted nothing to do with me,” he said, his nostril flaring. He was half disappearing in his pullover.

Had he missed all the texts that Kylo had bombarded him with? Had he not heard the story of his outburst in the cafeteria? Kylo didn’t understand; when he was mad or sad, he couldn’t keep it in. But it was like Hux had resorbed in himself.

“Why would you think that?!” he exclaimed, letting his frustration out. “Hux, you’re my best friend!”

Hux flinched at the declaration. A dog barked in the distance. Very few cars were passing in the street. Kylo had once again the strange impression that the neighbourhood was deserted, that Hux and him were the only humans left alive. He sniffed, his heart in his throat, sweat trickling down his back from stress.

“Well that’s just it isn’t it?” Hux answered, and Kylo could almost see him mustering his courage to keep on talking. “I don’t want to be your best friend, okay? It’s not what I fucking want. I can’t help it. And you, well, you don’t want to be anything else after all.”

“Well, you are!” Kylo exclaimed, feeling betrayed. “You can’t take that away from me. You’ll be my best friend even if you never talk to me again. You can’t get rid of me now. Hux, you’ll be my best friend even if we get married, okay?”

Hux turned his head to look at him with the violence of a whiplash. His eyes were now bright with unshed tears and he seemed to have forgotten he was cold because he wasn’t hugging himself anymore. His fists were clenched at the end of his arms.

“Kylo,” he answered, his voice gripped with emotion, “you can’t just stay stuff like that if you’re not going to…” He took a deep breath, his mouth turning into a bitter scowl even if he was fighting it. “I mean, you can’t tell me shit like that and then reject me. That’s cruel.”

Kylo felt quite frustrated. “But I’m not rejecting you! I’ve missed you like hell! Fuck, I thought…I thought we agreed on what was happening between us!”

Hux jaw twitched. “It really didn’t seem that way the other day after the competition.” He looked like he wanted to say more on the subject, but he gritted his teeth to calm himself. He then added: “Just stop sending mixed signals, okay? I don’t think I can take it. Not from you.”

Kylo knew that he had to say the right thing if he didn’t wan to ruin this, this wonderful thing he and Hux had managed to create between them, forever. He tried to rack his brain to find the right answer, to show Hux, to just show him…

“The other day I was just not prepared!” he shouted. That wasn’t really eloquent. His mind was spinning but he just didn’t know what to do to make everything right.

Hux looked away from him again, and started walking again, muttering: “But the way you looked at me…I just…I really thought you were like, really _in love_ with me. I mean your face…”

He trailed of and laughed dejectedly. “What the fuck was I thinking? I knew that it was just too good to be true.”

Now Hux was doing it on purpose. Kylo knew for a fact that he was cleverer than that.

“It’s not that!” he shouted angrily.

Hux made a sudden about-turn. “Then what is it?”

They were sizing each other up.

“I’m just scared!” Kylo felt the aggressiveness in his voice.

Seeing Hux’s startled face, he repeated in a much dimer voice: “I’m just scared. That one day you’ll realise…”

“That I’ll realise what?” Hux asked, his voice still tainted with mistrust.

“That I don’t deserve it! That I’m not worth it!” Kylo exploded. “That there is something seriously wrong with me! That every body was right, and you’ll want nothing to do with me.”

This seemed to really annoy Hux rather than placate him. A dark shadow passed over his brow and his expression became a nasty frown.

“Why the fuck would you think that?”

“Because I ruin every thing! My uncle is a mess because of me, my parents almost got a divorce because of me, I won’t get into college, and there’s always a part of me that want to destroy everything. That feels satisfied to destroy things. Why the fuck someone strong and brilliant like you would want me?”

Hux got into his face and Kylo could feel the warmth emanating from him, the spittle from his anger.

“Listen,” Hux began ferociously, “for everything that is wrong with you I’ll match it and then top it okay? I don’t fucking care if you’re a freak! For fuck sake’s Kylo, I’ve never felt so happy as when I spent a night with you cuddling my feet! You don’t know how alone I felt before knowing you and your stupid smile and your stupid face, how I only had hatred to make me feel _something_. But you! You changed everything asshole! Don’t you get it?”

Hux still looked furious, but his lashes were definitely darkened by wetness. Kylo slumped, his anger deflated, leaving only a black, gaping, pulsing need.

“Just fucking tell me you love me,” he sniffed miserably, his eyes downcast.

Hux grabbed him and screamed in his face: “I do. I fucking love you, you imbecile. You’re the only good thing in my shit life!”

Kylo clutched at him, not really managing to swallow a sob, and cradled his familiar sneering face in his big hands, holding his cheeks like he was the most perfect thing in the world. He tipped his forehead against Hux’s, his body shaken by half repressed shudders. So close he could see very light freckles scattered on Hux’s white skin, he could smell his breath, and he could hear his pulse. His lips were glistening with the words he had just shouted. His hands tightened on Kylo’s neck, demanding, waiting. Kylo closed his eyes and offered his mouth. Hux’s bite made him whimper. His lips felt hot and his tongue was demanding, licking inside Kylo’s mouth as if it belonged to him by right. Hux’s kisses were mean and hungry. It just made him want to surrender more, to give himself up to painful bliss. He moaned, tipping his head back, letting Hux pull at his hair, letting him inside with relief such as he had never felt in his life.

When Hux finally let him breathe, without letting go of his hair, he looked like a man ready to go to war.

“Well, I love you too,” Kylo said, with one of these smiles you can only manage when you have cried a lot or have just let go of really heavy things. “I really, really do.”

 

* * *

 

The bus slowed down and approached the sidewalk. It stopped, and Kylo felt a rush of fresh air coming. Students climbed in. And then he could see Hux, his hair bright in the sunshine, his jacket sober as always. After the despair of the previous week, the sight made him blush with pleasure. Kylo turned his knees toward the aisle, to let Hux take his usual seat against the window.

“Hello,” he said with a shy smile.

It was difficult to look Hux in the eye and repress the stupid grin he felt his face wanted to slip into, so he kept his nose down, trying not to let his happiness spill everywhere.

“Hello,” Hux answered with a perfectly self-satisfied smile when he was comfortably seated, his bag between his feet. With a natural gesture he took Kylo’s hand where it rested on his knee, and laced their fingers together.

Kylo started stressing out immediately.

“Is this not okay?” Hux asked him, but he was stroking him with his thumb instead of letting go. He knew better know. He knew _Kylo_ better.

Kylo shook his head but squeezed his fingers at the same time, looking at him and the running background behind him. Had the houses of this street always been so spruce?

“ _Okay_ doesn’t really cover it,” he said leaning into Hux’s shoulder. “You feel more like morphine after what you put me through last week. Well, like how I understand morphine to work anyway. It’s quite overwhelming I must admit.”

Hux smirked. “Is this a being in public thing?” he asked. “You were very obliging when I kissed you on Saturday. I even seem to remember that you moaned my name.” He was positively sneering now.

Instead of giving an undignified answer, Kylo bended Hux’s fingers to punish his teasing. Hux folded on himself to try and protect his hand. His mouth opened to let out a curse and Kylo kissed him, releasing his hand; he hadn’t aimed well and it was wet and sloppy and warm and good. Hux free hand went to tug at his hair.

Hux’s eyes were still closed when Kylo broke the kiss. It had only lasted a few seconds but he could ear fast murmuring going on in the bus behind him. Kylo let out a nervous little laugh.

“Fuck, you are a freak,” Hux told him with admiration, his serious face bathed in the late winter light. In the distance Kylo could already see the school’s buildings.

 

* * *

 

Kylo was quite sure that the news of their highly demonstrative reconciliation had spread like wildfire, but surprisingly, no one had jumped right away on the occasion to poke fun at them.            Which was lucky for them because he felt so content that he probably could have choked them with his thoughts. He guessed that it was more risky to bully people because they were gay than because they were lame. It wasn’t as discreet and convenient. Although, some people had literally giggled at them, which had been a little confusing. It was a bit hard to know how to react when people weren’t being conventionally mean. The sound was less grating than the snickering at least, Hux had said.

 

When Han saw Kylo at dinner, he smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder without saying anything. His mum asked him to change his bedding and clean up his room. Kylo guessed he had stopped looking completely sinister.

 

* * *

 

“Why do they only sell diabetes in those machines?” Hux was complaining. “It could be a useful device if they actually used it to stock real food.”

They had planned on staying at the library to work a little before heading home, Kylo having quite a lot to catch up to after the _week of doom_ where his homework was concerned. Hux had forgotten to bring a snack, so they had gone to the vending machines. The bluish light that emanated from them gave a weird colour to his complexion.

“Like cabbage,” Kylo teased him. He personally considered chocolate to be a healthy food, as long as it was dark.

“No, like apples,” Hux replied in a condescending tone. “Or tuna cans!”

It turned out that there weren’t the only ones to feel peckish. Kylo saw them walking down the corridor before Hux did. They were four. From the way they punched each other in the shoulder when they recognised them and began to speak in a low voice between themselves like they were daring each other, he knew that he had better brace himself. They were all from the debate team, of all things. The tallest one took upon himself to sneak on Hux as if they were old buddies.

“Hey Hux, does he suck your cock well?” he asked articulately, designing Kylo with his chin.

Before Hux could answer, Kylo cleared his throat to attract the attention to him.

“I’m a virgin,” he said.

This answer gave way to a riot of laughter. It was the first time that one of his deliberate attempts to make somebody other than Hux laugh in this school had worked. Not that the debate team members knew that it was deliberate. They were so pleased with his answer that they punched him on the shoulder as well, like he was one of them.

“Not for long babe,” Hux said over the noise, in a sultry voice Kylo had never heard him taking.

That made the situation awkward and the quartet went debating elsewhere.

“Assholes,” Kylo said when they were out of earshot. “What about those oatcakes? I’ve seen you eat oats before.”

“Yeah, but those are full of refined sugar,” Hux replied, getting away from the machine after all. “Sorry about that, I just wanted to shut them up.”

“I know,” Kylo said. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Well, to be honest, I’d rather they talk about that then make shit up,” Hux said, turning left to the library. And then he smiled as if he had just remembered something.

“What is it?” Kylo asked, trailing him.

“Nothing,” Hux said, still smiling to himself.

“Come on,” he insisted. He knew that Hux wanted to tell him anyway, he just liked making Kylo ask for it.

Hux cast his eyes to the floor, his smile getting bigger. “It’s just that sometimes I can’t quite believe that you’re my boyfriend.” He was so attractive like that, half in his thoughts and half playful.

“I hope you realise how lucky you are, I’m a real catch,” Kylo joked to prevent himself from kissing him.

“I do,” Hux answered like he was talking about the weather forecast. “You are.”

In spite of all the looks and snide comments, the weeks leading to the spring of that year were the happiest of Kylo’s life. Their daily life wasn’t much altered, but the way Kylo apprehend it had completely changed. Now he could eat peas, take a math exam, get insulted or walk in the rain, all of it knowing that someone had chosen him. _Him_. That someone wanted him and thought he made their life better. That was quite a difference.

 

* * *

 

To celebrate the beginning of Spring, Mrs Morales decided to teach a cycle of classes about the reproduction of birds. Kylo was daydreaming about robins and doves and ravens and magpies and nightingales when a note arrived on his desk. He looked around, but everybody was pretending to be paying attention to the class. One or two people were texting on their laps, some were doodling. No one looked particularly suspicious. Frowning, he opened the note. He didn’t even think for a minute that he would find something nice or funny inside. From the penmanship he guessed that the sender was probably a female. It simply read _The National Domestic Violence Hotline | 24/7 Confidential Support._ It also had a phone number scribbled down.

That was violent. That’s the first thing Kylo thought. Even when people ganged up on him, he had never perceived it so clearly. He didn’t even feel hurt or attacked. He was just astounded that some people could see him and Hux together and would think of that. Of an abusive relationship. Even if they didn’t believe it, they still thought of it. What was that saying about them? Hux and him were nothing but affectionate with each other, they were always waiting for each other and smiling at each other. What they had was good. Did that bother people so much that they wanted to try and taint it? Or was it only that they would go to pretty disgusting lengths in order to be funny? That was just sad. Pitiful even. It was the first time Kylo felt like that toward a bully. It was the first time he saw how untrue what hurtful people were saying was.

Instead of letting himself get brought down by this, or get really angry to protect himself, he threw the bit of paper haphazardly over his shoulder and texted Hux. “ _I’m in room 33B and I finish at 4. Come show me some tenderness please._ ”

 At the end of the class, when he flung his back pack on his shoulder and got out of the class and into the riot of noises from the hallway, he saw Hux waiting against the wall, with his sober face and his stern mouth and the note felt like the most ridiculous attempt in the world.

 

* * *

 

KYLO 23:05 _Hux, there’s something we need to discuss tomorrow_

HUX 23:08 _What is it?_

KYLO 23:09 _Face to face will be better_

HUX 23:12 _Understood. See your stupid face tomorrow then_

KYLO 23:14 _Asshole. Good night xxx_

HUX _23:14 xoxoxo*_

“So, what was it you wanted to discuss?” Hux asked him at lunch when he had finished his anecdote about how well he had put Mandy Kowalski in her place during English via his close reading abilities. The weather was unthreatening enough that they had gone back to their spot in the parking lot.

Kylo swallowed before answering, which was rare enough. You didn’t really feel inclined toward etiquette when you were eating on the ground. Or when you were on the verge of freaking out for that matter.

“I wanted to tell you that I want to have sex with you. I think I’m ready.” He had thought about it, but he hadn’t found a way to formulate that that wouldn’t sound either ridiculous or too blunt. So he got the sentence out as quickly as possible to get it over with.

That didn’t seem to faze Hux, who smirked and simply said: “Okay.”

“Okay what?” Kylo asked anxiously. That wasn’t exactly the answer he had expected and he was way too nervous to take another bite of his sandwich.

 “Okay as in I’m ready too. Very ready, even,” Hux explained. “When?”

Kylo decided to ignore his elevated heart rate and go straight to the point. The method seemed to be effective after all. “My parents have a thing Saturday afternoon. We can have the house to ourselves.”

Hux wiped his mouth with his napkin and crawled toward Kylo to press a kiss on his mouth.

“What was that for?” Kylo asked, but he was stroking Hux’s cheek, relied flooding through him.

“For excellent planning. You know how I like that.”

Kylo smiled at him, smitten.

“Are you sure you’re sure though?” Hux still asked. His pale eyes were searching. His cheek was warm against Kylo’s palm.

He nodded. “Yes. That’s why I told you. I didn’t want to let you wonder.”

Hux smile felt serious.

 

* * *

 

HUX 21:02 _Come online I’m bored_

HUX 21:03 _I can’t wait for tomorrow and I’m being absolutely non productive_

KYLO 21:10 _Sorry, I’m having a family dinner with my uncle and cousin_

KYLO 21:11 _wish we could be together right now_

KYLO 21:11 _I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight_

HUX 21:13 _I still can’t quite realise that I’ll get to see you NAKED_

KYLO 22:40 _sorry I kind of knocked my glass over when I saw your last text and my mum forbade me from texting_

KYLO 22:42 _And I’m sure you did it on purpose!!_

KYLO 22:43 _I’ll get to see you naked too_

HUX 23:04 _was typing an answer but am pretty sure it would led to sexting so I’ll conclude with goodnight_

KYLO 23:06 _Haha! night night handsome_

 

* * *

 

When the door rang on Saturday, Kylo jumped even if he had been in the living room waiting for it, flicking through the channels every twelve seconds to kill time. He stubbed his toe on the coffee table and only felt it when he opened the door.

“Hello,” Hux said.

Had he always looked so lovely? Kylo gulped, at a loss for words and suddenly unable to move. 

“Oh, don’t panic you baby,” Hux said tenderly, letting himself in and closing the door behind him. “We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do. It’s just the both of us, we don’t have any expectations to fill, okay?”

He took Kylo’s hand, the one that was still holding the remote, and kissed his knuckles. Hux’s hands were cold from the outside. Hux then led him with confidence into the living room.

“So, how was the family dinner?” he asked

“Ah, err” Kylo struggled, caught unaware by the question, “as fine as these kind of things can get I guess.”

“Good,” Hux declared with a smile. “I was afraid you had a bad time.”

He seemed genuinely pleased for Kylo, like he had a personal interest in his well-being. That was really attractive. Kylo was filled with a surge of love and he didn’t even know why he had been anxious in the first place. He picked Hux up, like he weighted nothing.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing,” Hux protested, “manhandling me like that?”

 “Taking you to my room so we can make love,” Kylo declared.

 “Oh, I see we have upgraded from having sex,” Hux teased, lacing his arms around Kylo’s neck. “I’m very lucky, seeing as I don’t even have any miles yet!”

Kylo dropped him on his bed, and they were laughing, nervous but happy. They kissed for a long time, pressing against each other among the softness of pillows and the smell of fresh laundry. Kylo had changed the bedding in the morning. He had spend so much time thinking of this exact moment. Hux was humming with satisfaction, hiding into Kylo’s neck, clutching at his hair with one hand and scratching his back with the other. He had gotten rid of his t-shirt pretty quickly, because he wanted to see Kylo’s moles.

Kylo big hands found their way underneath Hux’s clothes too. His skin was soft and warm and felt good against his palm. He got rid of Hux’s t-shirt, of his shoes and belt. He was slender and pale, except for the blush on his neck and chest. His nipples were very pink, his hairs almost transparent. Kylo observed all these details with his eyes and with his fingers. It felt intensely intimate.

The more clothes Kylo took off him, the less confident Hux seemed, even though he didn’t say anything. He was only getting imperceptibly stiffer. When they were down to their brief and socks, Kylo bumped his nose with Hux’s nose and gave him little kisses.

“What is it?” he asked gently into Hux’s ear.

“I’m not…as big as you.”

“Yeah, that’s why you’re not as clumsy,” Kylo answered. Hux bit his throat.

When he was reassured that Hux hadn’t changed his mind, Kylo sat up and tugged his white briefs down. He let out a pleased laugh.

“What?” Hux grunted.

“Your pubes are orange,” Kylo said, still chuckling. “That’s so charming.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Hux groaned, hiding his face underneath his arm.

Kylo got rid of the undergarment and threw it on the floor. “No, I really love it. You know I do.” He got onto his elbows to bring his face next to Hux’s crotch and have a better view.

“You’re really…beautiful,” he decided, trailing his fingers in large circles on Hux’s stomach and thighs.

Hux smirk returned to his face after that.

When he had gathered his courage, Kylo passed an uncertain hand through the hairs, caressing lightly Hux’s erogenous area. Hux watched him touching his body, his cock filling and turning a brighter shade of pink, a hand tugging at Kylo’s black hair. He spread his legs and Kylo laid between them, his torso resting against Hux’s stomach, his face tilted toward him, asking for a kiss. Hux bent and gave it to him, and it was warm, and slow, and delicious. His bed had never felt so comfortable. They laid naked together, sprawled against each other, kissing and nuzzling, Hux whispering words of praise to him that made Kylo melt in pleasure. When they were both so hard that they couldn’t ignore it any longer, Hux whispered “I want to be inside you” in his ear. Kylo shivered.

“Hum…ah…okay…”

“Just okay?” Hux asked, stroking his hair

“Well I…I don’t know if I like it…but I’m okay with trying…I bought some condoms. Lube also.”

Hux gave him a kiss. “Oh, that’s really good planning Kylo. Do you think we need them though?” he asked. “I’m as virginal as an April flower.”

“Well…it’s more for you.” Kylo explained. “I…did some research on gay sex. There are bacteria in the colon, you could get a urinal infection or something.”

Hux considered this only for a moment before yielding that it was a good point. “God I’m so glad I’m doing this with you,” he said “and not anyone else. Because I can tell we’re going to be terrible at this. “

Kylo laughed good-heartedly. His cock was beginning to soften.

“Oh, you don’t want to do it then?” Hux asked when he noticed the deflation. There was only concern in his voice, no urgency.

Kylo felt his ears going hot. “I mean, it suddenly got too technical and my brain kind of took over. I mean…I just realised that this is actually happening to me.” Having sex was really turning out to be a lot more complex than he had thought. He put both his arms around Hux to ground himself.

Hux was still visibly excited, but his caresses and his words remained calm. “Hum…Maybe we should watch porn,” he suggested. “You know, to get used to the idea. That is, if you still want to do it with me.”

Kylo turned scarlet.

“What, we’re naked on your bed, I’m pretty sure I’ve smeared precum on your pillow, don’t tell me you’re suddenly shy about that,” Hux teased him, bumping their noses together.

“No it’s not that…I…err…well it’s just the kind of porn I’ve been watching lately.”

Kylo detached himself from Hux, mourning the loss of delicious warmth, and went to unplug the laptop that was sitting on his desk to bring it back to his bed.

“I’m I about to discover very specific kinks?” Hux asked with mild interest. “Let me guess…genital piercings?”

“No, it’s not really a kink,” Kylo answered earnestly. “More like…a requirement for the video to work for me…”

He let Hux shuffle to his historic. Hux was surprised that Kylo didn’t bother deleting any of it of course. But that was only a thought in the background of his brain, because the most interesting thing was that, in the title of every video that Kylo had clicked on, there was the word _ginger_ or _redhead_.

“That’s…actually romantic?” Hux eyes were suspiciously bright.

Kylo closed the laptop down and put it on the floor. He then took Hux’s hands in his.

“So you see,” he said, “I do want you. I really do. It’s just that…I’m a goddamned mess and I’m really nervous.” He gave a shaky laugh. “Look, my hands are clammy.”

“You don’t need to be nervous,” Hux told him kindly, but also like it was an order.

“I can’t help it, I’m kind of an intense guy. I can’t always control myself when I get started.”

Hux took his clammy hand between his, and then, looking Kylo dead in the eye, he drew the hand toward him, toward his tights, and put his warm balls on Kylo’s palm. Their breath hitched at the same time.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Hux said. “It doesn’t even have to be good. It only has to be you.”

And then he kissed Kylo.

Something shifted inside Kylo’s head and suddenly this was not something to ridicule himself by failing at. This was Hux, this was safe. This was good. He let his big fingers trails between Hux’s ass cheeks and then squeezed one of them. He rubbed his asshole gently when he found it, descended towards his tights to feel the soft skin there, palmed his balls again, letting the fine hairs tickle his skin, all the while delighting in the noises Hux emitted directly inside his mouth. Soon his own dick was aching again.

Hux must have felt him getting hard because he broke the kiss and looked down hungrily at Kylo’s cock.

“You still have all your foreskin,” he noted, managing to sound a bit reverent while playing with it alongside Kylo’s length.

“Yeah, I told you my parents are hippies”, Kylo said breathlessly. “Hux, did I mention how much I love your fingers?”

“No.”

“Well, they are beautiful. Especially when they’re touching me.”

Hux laughed, happy. “Would you like me to put my fingers inside you?” he asked, a bit mischievous. 

But Kylo answered simply “Yeah, okay.”

Hux let out a groan and gave him a hard kiss. He fumbled with the little bottle of lube eagerly. Kylo hadn’t unwrapped it from its plastic film. Hux got way to much lube on his fingers and some of it dripped onto the bed and they both let out half laughs. Then Hux advanced on his knees toward Kylo. They were flushed together when Hux put his hand between Kylo’s legs. The lube felt cold against him. Hux found his asshole and smirked with enormous satisfaction. He rubbed a little and soon Kylo felt the ring of his muscle let a finger in. Hux’s finger. He got it out and pushed it inside again, a look of supreme concentration on his face. His mouth stayed half open, his eyes glazed. Kylo let out a moan. His cheeks were burning. He could feel Hux exploring inside him. He put Hux’s other hand on his aching cock. Hux closed his fist on it and then crooked his finger inside Kylo. More importantly, he looked deep in his eyes, like he wanted to plunge inside Kylo, and Kylo felt his own eyes beginning to itch.

 _Hux has his finger inside me_ , _he is like fingering me oh my god we’re having sex_ Kylo thought with what was wonder bordering on panic. Of course he came in two minutes flat. And with an embarrassing growl and a shudder at that.

“So I guess it means you liked it then.” Hux noted with an enormously pleased smirk, playing with Kylo’s cum on his fingers.

“Yeah…” Kylo admitted with a sweet and shy smile.

Then they looked each other in the eye. Kylo’s heart was beating widely. Hux seemed so confident he looked like a young god. It was almost painful to look at him.

“God I love you,” Kylo said, his voice naked with need, grabbing Hux arms, unable not to stay without touching him. “Please, I want you inside me now.”

“Are you sure?” Hux asked, uncertain and more in control of himself. “I mean you already…” His eyes went to Kylo’s spent cock.

“Yeah, it’s better this way,” Kylo said. “I get overwhelmed pretty easily. It’ll be better for my first time.”

Hux smiled at him, brushed his nose against Kylo’s again. “Okay. If you’re sure,” he said.

“I’m sure,” Kylo said.

So Hux rubbed a lot more lube on his asshole and pushed some inside him. Kylo put a condom on Hux and put lube on him. The whole business was pretty functional, but Kylo perceived it through a kind of fevered haze. Then Kylo lay on his back, a pillow underneath his hips, and Hux settled between his legs. Then Hux lined up with him, and it was happening, he was pushing into him.

“How do you feel?” Hux asked Kylo when he had managed to push all the way in. The words seemed painful. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

“It hurts.” Kylo answered honestly. “I’ve never done this before. I can feel you _so much_.”

Hux’s breath hitched and he cursed. “We can stop,” he said, stilling himself, voice strained.

“No we can’t,” Kylo said. “I’d die.”

So Hux stayed still inside him for a few minutes, and they kissed and Kylo felt that Hux was fucking his mouth with his tongue and that got him so hot that he began to move his hands on Hux’s tights to tell him that he didn’t have to stay still anymore. Hux started rolling his hips, and Kylo could feel his _cock_ rubbing inside him. How crazy was that? He clenched against Hux, to drive him to take what he wanted. Hux broke the kiss and he was flushed scarlet. He began to fuck Kylo in earnest, and it felt incredible to know that _it was happening_ and it felt good to feel so full, even if it still hurt. Little shocks of pleasure even jolted him, aimless and free. Kylo moaned and clutched at Hux.

“You’re so good Kylo,” Hux panted in his ear, fucking sweetly into him. “You’re doing so well.”

Kylo felt like he was going mad. He felt the pleasure, but it was the emotional connection that sent his mind reeling. No one had ever wanted to be this close to him.

Hux’s voice was raspy. “You’re such a sweet boy and I…arrr… I’ve been in love with you since I saw you fucking crying in that bathroom…you’re fucking mine.”

Kylo gasped, his whole body sent in a shudder. It felt like he had received a punch to the heart. It felt like Hux was making love to his brain as well. Kylo spasmed around Hux. Hux bucked and whimpered, biting Kylo’s shoulder.

“I’m so close,” he managed to say. “I’m going to come inside you.”

 _I want you to stay inside me forever_ , Kylo thought.

Maybe he said it. Maybe he only cried. Hux came and it was beautiful to hold him through his climax, in his arms and inside his body. He felt Hux’s nails digging into his skin. It gave Kylo an intense feeling of belonging. He felt like he was melting into the bed. Maybe he was fucking insane for feeling so much.

 

They must have dozed off because the next thing Kylo was aware of was the noise of the family car slowing and coming to a halt below his window. The sky was darkening, the street lamps already lit.

Kylo’s ass stung and he smiled at the sensation. He passed his fingers in Hux’s hair and stroked his temple to wake him up.

“Hux,” he said. He wanted to use an endearment but he didn’t know how to do it without sounding ridiculous. “My parents are back.”

Hux’s eyes opened suddenly at that, but he didn’t move. He smelled good, like sweat and blood and Kylo.

“Are we in trouble?” he asked.

“No, why?”

“We just had sex.” Hux pointed out.

 “I don’t see how that’s a bad thing,” Kylo said.

Hux’s smile was full of wonder. He was quite skinny but he didn’t look weak. He looked healthy and sated.

“I really liked being fucked,” Kylo said. “I didn’t know I would.”

“I knew,’ Hux said. “I knew it could be wonderful for you.” Kylo hugged him.

They heard the front door being opened. Keys being dropped, shoes getting kicked off, a chair being pulled.

“You should stay for dinner,” Kylo said with a devious smile. “It’s going home that would make you look suspicious.”

“I’m not sure I could bring myself to leave you anyway,” Hux answered with something awfully raw in his eye.

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo thought his life couldn’t get any better until the afternoon when Daryl finally got what was coming to him. He was walking with Hux toward the bus stop. Hux was happy that afternoon because his father was going away on a business trip and Kylo was telling him that his parents wanted to have him for dinner. He knew that is was important to Hux to feel accepted, even if he would never admit it. The air was crisp but it had been a beautiful day and the colour of the bus was very bright against the sky.

“Hey Kylo Ren,” Daryl interrupted them, “they say you have a tattoo that says _pain makes me stronger_.”

He too must have been in a good disposition due to the weather and was in the mood to make his friends laugh at his easy wit. Kylo ignored him and carried on walking, making Hux trail after him. He knew Hux really wanted his revenge, but if it were up to him, he’d just give the guy the good beating he was obviously begging for.

Daryl wasn’t content with being ignored. “Hey Kylo Ren, is that why you’re going out with McGinger?” he insisted.

Sometimes Kylo thought that he should make his mum call the principal and complain about homophobia, even if it wasn’t exactly what was at play here. At least _this_ would get people punished. He knew she would do it gladly. She liked Hux and she loved him. The reason he hadn’t was because it would be too much work for her to report on half the school. He squeezed Hux fingers into his own to keep his calm.

“Hey Kylo Ren,” continued Daryl oblivious to the rigidity of his posture, “Why are you such a masochist?”

Hux stopped walking, bringing Kylo to a forced halt. He turned calmly toward Daryl, saying nothing, his face neutral. He took a step toward the joker and then, without any warning, simply spat in his face. He spat a big white gob that landed half on Daryl’s left eyebrow and half on the bridge of his nose. Someone gasped. Someone else let out a disbelieving laugh. Daryl couldn’t find anything to say anymore.

Kylo was gobsmacked. Hux had just managed to use everything that was ever done to him to his advantage. That was pure genius. What could be more humiliating than being reviled precisely by the one who had been dimed the vilest of all?

He snorted. “You’re fucking pathetic,” he said to Daryl, now seeing it as the sad truth it was. “That’s all you are. I feel bad for you.”

And then he and Hux walked away. Hux was silently triumphant. He looked fucking beautiful with the wind in his bright hair and a mean smirk on his lips. Kylo thought he looked like he could take on the world and win. And he thought he would like nothing more than to fight with him.


End file.
